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S.O.S.: AMERICA'S MIRACLE IN FRANCE 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


THE BUSINESS 


OF WAR Cloth, Net, $1.50 


THE REBIRTH 


OF RUSSIA Cloth, Net, $1.25 


THE WAR AFTER 


THE WAR Cloth, Net, $1.25 


LEONARD WOOD: 


PROPHET OF PREPAREDNESS 


Cloth, Net, 75 cents 




GENERAL JOHN J. PERSHING 
Commander-in-Chief of the A. E. F. 







s. o. s. 


AMERICA'S MIRACLE IN FRANCE 




BY 




ISAAC F. MARCOSSON 




AUTHOR OF 




"THE BUSINESS OF WAR," 




"THE REBIRTH OF RUSSIA," 




"THE WAR AFTER THE WAR," 




ETC. 




WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS 




FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 


NEW 


YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 


LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 




MCMXIX 





s* 



10 



,M 



< 



Copyright, 1918, 1919, by The Curtis Publishing Company 



Copyright, 1919, 
By JOHN LANE COMPANY 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 
New York, U. S. A. 



&CLA515280 
APR 19 1319 



TO 
GENERAL JOHN J. PERSHING 

SOLDIER, DIPLOMAT, ADMINISTRATOR 



FOREWORD 



THIS book was written in France — often within 
sound of the guns — as a tribute to the unsung 
heroes of Supply and Transport. Many were 
above military age; most of them left congenial jobs 
to do their part in a task which was both stern and 
unspectacular. Far from the firing line which they 
longed to join, and amid the dust of traffic, the din 
of docks, and the hot confines of an office, they con- 
tributed vitally to the achievement of the American 
Expeditionary Force. 

Their work discloses an unselfish and uncomplain- 
ing effort that will rank with the glories of Chateau- 
Thierry, St. Mihiel and Sedan. More than this it 
proves that the genius of American organisation was 
no less effective in war than in peace. The lessons of 
efficiency learned under the stress of necessity over- 
seas should now be capitalised in the vast Drama of 
Reconstruction at home. 

To those gallant men of the A.E.F. from the Com- 
mander-in-Chief down, I desire to express my grate- 
ful appreciation of a co-operation and a comradeship 
that made my work a pleasure and a privilege. 

I. F. M. 

New York, January, 19 19. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Birth of the S. 0. S 15 

II The Business of War 37 

III Army Tracks and Traffic 65 

IV From Ship to Shore 105 

V Feeding the Doughboys 119 

VI The Cities of Supply 145 

VII Detroit in France 171 

VIII The Miracle Motor Man 197 

IX The Salvage of Battle 220 

X New Men for Old 237 

XI The Marvels of Army Organisation . . 258 

XII System unto Death 296 

XIII Business Managing War 306 

XIV The Balance Sheet 330 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



General John J. Pershing Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

The Author's Letter of Authorization ... 28 

Major-General James G. Harbord .... 46 

Brigadier-General Hagood and the Author . 52 

Brigadier-General W. W. Atterbury ... 82 

Major-General Harry L. Rogers 120 

Colonel F. H. Pope 176 

Colonel H. A. Hegeman 176 

Lieutenant-Colonel M. R. Wainer . . . . 176 

Colonel H. C. Smither 176 

Brigadier-General Edgar J ad win 288 

Brigadier-General M. L. Walker .... 288 

Colonel W. J. Wilgus 288 

Brigadier-General George Van Horn Moseley 288 

Brigadier-General Charles G. Dawes . . . 310 



11 



S.O.S.: AMERICA'S MIRACLE IN FRANCE 



I— The Birth of the S. O. S. 



THE boom of American cannon echoed beyond 
the Meuse; machine guns sputtered wickedly 
to the right and left ; overhead Liberty motors 
hummed as the aeroplanes returned from their eve- 
ning reconnaissance; down the dark paths to the 
trenches troops marched to the rattle of equipment. 
All around was the deadly din of war — the unfailing 
music of the supreme world drama. America was 
on the frontiers of the Great Redemption. 

Behind that fighting front stretches another bat- 
tle-line that reaches from those perilous posts of free- 
dom four hundred miles down to the sea and then 
three thousand miles beyond to the shores of the 
United States. About it is no glamour of stirring 
spectacle; no scene of actual combat. Yet day and 
night and with ceaseless and heroic endeavour it feeds 
and supplies the battling hosts. Instead of mustard 
gas it breathes the choking dust of teeming highways ; 
in place of open shot and bursting shell it faces the 
hidden hazard of the submarine. Bending beneath 
the burden of a tonnage that is one of the wonders 
of the war, it maintains the insurance against a dis- 
aster more destructive than Hun advance. For mouth 
and guns must be fed and fighters clothed and car- 
ried. 

15 



16 S. O. S. 

We thrilled at the narrative of Chateau-Thierry 
and St. Mihiel, yet every twenty-four hours since we 
have had an army of any size in France these legions 
of transport and subsistence, combating wind, rain 
and every obstacle that war-fare in a foreign land 
imposes, have registered an achievement fit to rank 
with that high heroism. Their gallantries have been 
recorded in the tangle of railroad yards, in the gloom 
of warehouses, amid the glare of sun-scorched quays, 
or the prosaic routine of repair shops. For them 
there are few medals of merit; only the consciousness 
that without their unsung service of the rear there 
would be no brilliant offensive at the front. 

This army behind the army is the first to land ; the 
last to leave. In his eager search for the smell of 
powder sightseer and historian pass it by. Nor is 
it surprising. In the thrall of battle tumult the world 
loses sight of the mechanics of war. It is easier to 
have an emotion about a forlorn hope led to victory 
than about a food supply column that reached the 
line under a storm of shrapnel. Yet the courage of 
the teamsters who faced death with only the reins 
in their hands is full mate to the valour of the fight- 
ing men armed with rifles. 

From France this past year has come a flood of 
writing about the fighting doughboy and his doings. 
The boy who supplies the doughboy has, in the main, 
escaped the spot-light. Yet he is part of an intricate 
organisation that has solved, so far as supply and 
transport are concerned, the most stupendous mili- 
tary problem in all history. For every soldier that 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 17 

we land in France we must also land fifty pounds of 
supplies and equipment every day. Most of it comes 
across three thousand miles of submarine-infested sea. 
Each aeroplane that we assemble over there needs 
forty men for upkeep. Our motor transport service 
alone requires sixty thousand different kinds of spare 
parts. To guard against a break-down in ocean com- 
munication we are compelled to keep and do keep 
a ninety days' reserve of food and fuel on the Con- 
tinent. We have more than two million troops in 
France and the number increases daily. A ship loaded 
with soldiers or supplies leaves an American port 
for France every fifteen minutes. An avalanche of 
men and munitions literally beats upon the shores of 
our sister republic. We originally planned for an 
expeditionary force of 500,000 men; the scheme has 
been expanded five times until we now march to a 
goal of 4,000,000. These men and their supplies must 
be adapted to a shifting scheme of combat or sub- 
sistence the moment they arrive. How have we kept 
pace with this stupendous and incessant activity and 
at the same time avoided a congestion that in twenty- 
four hours would be fatal to an adequate participa- 
tion in the war? What is the system that has been 
proof against every handicap that enemy cunning, 
aided by geography, could set up? 

Search for the reply and a master chapter in the 
story of the American effort in France is bared. It 
is an epic of action aglow with faith and rich with 
the sacrifice of men who, eager to rise up and fight, 
buckle down to drudgery that has no thrills. They 



18 S. O. S. 

wrestle with figures, pore over charts, pound type- 
writers, drive trucks, unload ships and build docks 
and railways in order that their more fortunate broth- 
ers may have a fling at glory. This romance of 
America transplanted is as stirring as any battle biog- 
raphy. 

I have touched it at every point. For weeks I 
followed the trail of tins and transport from dock 
to trench, I lived in the turmoil of ports, dug into 
diagrams, saw this whole panorama of supply pass 
in deafening and well-nigh bewildering review. When 
you have watched it you realise why the American 
soldier has not missed a meal or lacked the where- 
withal to fight ever since he has been abroad. It 
took blood and sweat and agony to produce the goods, 
but they have always been delivered. The fifty mil- 
lions that we spend every day for war are not wasted. 

Likewise you understand how, when Paris sat im- 
perilled last July, General Pershing could swing a 
well-equipped and well-supplied army into the line 
almost overnight and help stem the tide at that his- 
toric stream where once before civilisation trembled 
for its fate. It was not accident or luck that added 
Chateau-Thierry to the lustre of American arms. It 
was because the American overseas machine that feeds 
the fighting man was so well constructed and so mo- 
bile that it responded swiftly and efficiently to the 
first emergency call. Here was revealed and in kin- 
dling fashion the initial phase of the mighty miracle 
that has transformed a disorganised democracy into 
a formidable military power. 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 19 

I have no illusions about army organisation. For 
three years I have ranged that flaming battle line that 
once began in the snowy Caucasus and ends at last 
in the blue waters of the Adriatic. In that time I 
have seen many millions of men under every condi- 
tion of modern combat and commisariat. "The lives 
they led were mine." Thus it came about in the 
troubled course of war events that after all this wan- 
dering amid alien armies and under foreign flags I 
came at last to my own people to find the supreme 
supply achievement of the struggle. 

It is no depreciation of any of the army organisa- 
tions that I have described to say that the American 
Business of War as expressed in the Service of Sup- 
ply (the "S. O. S." they call it for short) is the most 
remarkable performance of the kind that I have yet 
seen. Those magic letters which, flashed by wireless, 
spell distress at sea, mean first aid to the fighting 
American in France. Dwell under their Standard and 
you feel that they may also stand for the Spirit of 
Sacrifice! 

Do not get the idea that we have reached perfec- 
tion. You cannot construct a Panama Canal over 
night and fail to find a few raw spots at dawn. We 
are not standardised, for example, like the British 
or the French. But England and France have reached 
the limit of their war strength; they have been going 
war concerns for over four years. Our troops and 
supplies, on the other hand, are in a constant race 
across the Atlantic. We serve as we build. Hence 
in the magnitude of our operations, in the difficulties 



20 S. O. S. 

that eternally beset us, and in the far-flung and gal- 
vanic energy that animates us, we stand alone. The 
impetuosity of the American soldier, one of his out- 
standing qualities, obtains with ration as with rifle. 
The proverbial desert that suddenly bloomed like 
a garden has nothing on the A. E. F. By one of the 
curious paradoxes of war we create and consume at 
the same time. A warehouse is filled before it is 
roofed; giant cranes swing cargoes from ships while 
they are being berthed ; the cow-catchers of American 
locomotives press on the heels of the track construc- 
tion gangs. The supply city of to-day is unrecognisa- 
ble in a fortnight because it grows so fast. We have 
turned farms into factories; converted swamps into 
swarming communities. We reclaim men just as we 
salvage guns. We have laid down and operate a series 
of railways equal in scope to the Pennsylvania sys- 
tem ; we feed and supply a population almost as large 
as that of St. Louis; we have erected a cold storage 
plant that would supply every citizen in Greater 
New York, London, Paris and Chicago with fresh 
meat for twenty- four hours; somewhere in France 
we have established a motor principality that is a 
small replica of Detroit. Co-ordinating this universe 
of effort is a system of control and administration, 
linked up with every scientific aid to modern com- 
merce, that would run a hundred United States Steel 
Corporations all rolled into one. Even the horses 
have identity discs! Quantity output, which drama- 
tises the genius of the American Industry of Peace, 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 21 

is duplicated in this new American Business of War, 
Unlimited ! 

Every real American is a shareholder in this giant 
enterprise. Its bank is the Liberty Bond; its balance 
sheet the roll of our national honour; its perpetual 
dividend will be peace and security in the days to 
come. 

The spirit of that Overseas America which changed 
Allied depression into defiance in the crucial hour of 
the war is after all the same pioneer spirit that con- 
quered the prairies and won the West. It animated 
Lincoln and Lee and Grant and is to-day reincar- 
nated in the character and purpose of Pershing and 
the working and fighting host he leads. In this war- 
born faith which finds one expression in the Services 
of Supply lies the hope of the New America, which, 
re-created in the crucible of conflict, will be a factor 
in the rehabilitation of the world. 

You cannot understand the immense operation 
which daily pumps and provides the life blood of the 
A. E. F. without knowing the approach to that his- 
toric day when our troops first set foot on France. 
It explains many things, most of all the colossal diffi- 
culties under which our supply system was launched. 

As most people know, Marshal Joffre went to 
America soon after we declared war and pleaded for 
immediate assistance. It is no secret that the French 
morale had wavered slightly under three years of 
incessant hammering. Human endurance, heroic as 
it was, had almost reached the limit of its powers. 
The hero of the first battle of the Marne said in 



22 S. O. S. 

substance : "Send us troops at once. You must make 
a beginning no matter how small. " This procedure 
was against our better judgment, which dictated de- 
lay until we could come in force. Besides the way- 
had to be prepared. But France's need was urgent. 

It followed that almost before the United States 
realised that it had gone to war our First Expedi- 
tionary Force — the immortal prototype of Britain's 
gallant "First Seven Divisions," steamed unheralded 
into St. Nazaire on a June day in 19 17 that will be 
forever famous. So far as the tools of supply and 
transport were concerned, that vanguard of the new 
armies of democracy had practically nothing but its 
bare hands, and with these implements it set to work. 
The spade had to precede the crusade. Bread was 
necessary before bullets. The first scene in the vast 
drama of our actual participation therefore discloses 
that handful of men in khaki digging, grubbing and 
building, and it has kept up ever since on a constantly 
increasing scale. 

At the start the two principal problems were re- 
vealed. One was labour; the other was tonnage. 
This is why our little army could not join the battle 
line at once. It discarded the rifle for the pick; the 
engineers who came out to plan trenches, military rail- 
ways, and fortifications had to enlarge docks, build 
berths and erect bakeries. 

Now began the chorus of European criticism which 
was not without its echoes back home. Those of us 
who travelled back and forth from Europe in those 
trying days got it on all sides. "Why is America 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 23 

so slow? Why can't a nation of a hundred millions 
get an army into the field?" was the refrain. 

These people who jeered and criticised little knew 
the price in sweat and sacrifice that our outposts in 
France were paying for unreadiness. But if the na- 
tion was unprepared the individual was not. It is 
the triumph of this dauntless individualism, now 
welded into an organised and close-knit whole, that 
has made the achievement of the A. E. F. possible. 
Nowhere is it more strikingly apparent than in the 
development of the Services of Supply. 

But while those intrepid outposts whose picks and 
derricks registered a courage not surpassed on the 
firing line, worked and worried, help was on the 
way. During the heart-breaking autumn of 1917 the 
labour battalions began to arrive. The plantation 
darkey from Alabama suddenly found himself work- 
ing alongside a Chinese coolie on a French dock piled 
with American supplies. We began to annex ports; 
our engineers burrowed into the rich soil of France; 
acres of machinery sprawled about in apparent con- 
fusion. Still the plaint was "Why so slow?" 

Then the miracle happened. Almost overnight the 
visible structure of a vast supply system appeared. 
Out of the mire rose quays; in the waste places ware- 
houses broke like magic; American locomotives seem- 
ingly sprang from the ground as the fabled knights of 
old leaped from the planted dragons' teeth. The 
French blinked their eyes; our British cousins stood 
speechless. But to the American it represented no 
witchery or necromancy. Accustomed to see a gaping 



24 S. O. S. 

busy hole in the midst of a city block give forth a 
steel skyscraper almost overnight he knew that Yankee 
construction history, animated by stupendous hustle, 
was simply repeating itself. 

In trying to appraise our whole supply and trans- 
port performance in France (and it is all part of the 
larger American war story), it is well to remember 
that practically without preparation we were sud- 
denly called upon to send an army overseas and sus- 
tain it. Back of this lay the fact that we had to create 
and train that army first. Until we went to grips with 
Germany we had no considerable armed force. What 
we did have was largely national guard. The regular 
establishment never exceeded 100,000 men. It was 
scattered throughout the United States, Alaska, Porto 
Rico, the Philippines, China and Panama. A colonel 
seldom had his regiment together ; save at manoeuvres 
we never mustered a brigade; until the mobilisation 
on the Mexican border a division was an impossi- 
bility. The European war produced the General Or- 
ganisation Project which outlined a real American 
army comprising a larger combatant force than the 
whole Union had at the close of the Civil War; many 
more men than Grant had ever handled at any one 
time. The modern army not only fights but invents. 
Into its scheme must go every aid that science or 
German hellishness have brought to honourable com- 
bat. It means wireless, searchlights, gas and aero- 
plane service, and countless other things undreamed 
of when we went to war with Spain. Yet this scheme 
was only on paper when the hour struck for Amer- 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 25 

ica. It meant, as far as our present purpose is con- 
cerned, that the vitally necessary agency to feed, equip 
and transport troops on a large scale was barely in 
the making. Now you can see why we have had to 
build and serve and fight in France, all at the same 
time. 

Search all history and you will find that no great 
military effort was ever made under the handicaps 
that tried the souls of the organisers of the American 
Expeditionary Forces. You must know them before 
you can make a real estimate of that far-flung line of 
communication that not only binds the American 
trench to warehouse and factory but never knows a 
break. 

First of all we have what may be called the moral 
obstacle crystallised in our national ignorance of what 
an army is. To our credit we have always been a 
peace-loving nation. But when the world is at war 
this state of mind is not altogether an asset. Al- 
though many Americans outwardly hooted at Mr. 
Bryant theory that "a million men would leap to arms 
between sunrise and sunset' ' many of them secretly 
thought he was right. They changed their minds 
when the draft came along and the era of the train- 
ing camp began. 

It was the fashion in many quarters to jeer at the 
regular army, to deride, for example, the quarter- 
master who in the popular ignorance was looked upon 
as a sutler or a glorified clerk. Yet it was the band 
of devoted regular quartermasters, capitalising their 
hard won experience in Cuban jungle, Philippine wild, 



26 S. O. S. 

or on the sun-baked Mexican border, who formed the 
nucleus of the wing of our enormous supply service 
that is the backbone of the system. Then, too, Amer- 
icans did not readily grasp the idea that a great army 
must be equipped and, what is most important, prop- 
erly organised and officered. All this required Edu- 
cation at a time when intelligent and alert Co-opera- 
tion should have been the watchword. It only made 
our job in Europe all the harder. 

But this moral handicap paled before the physical 
obstacles that grimly blocked the way. Heading the 
list was the super-problem of transporting men and 
supplies across three thousand miles of sea, full of 
hidden terror and destruction. With a minimum av- 
erage requirement of five tons of shipping for every 
man in France the magnitude of the proposition is at 
once apparent. And we had no shipping. 

Right here came the fundamental difference between 
the subsistence problems of the three leading Allies. 
The French had all their sources of supply at hand; 
England could rectify her water transportation in 
twenty-four hours; with us it was a matter of three 
weeks' time between departure and arrival. Empires 
have been won and lost in that time. 

Once we arrived in France we found that all util- 
ities such as docks, railways, and telephone and tele- 
graph lines were being used by others, principally the 
French, but in many instances by both the French and 
the British. Instantly there came the inevitable and 
peaceful conflict with French laws. If you have ever 
tried to do anything "official" in France you can at 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 27 

once appreciate the tangle of red tape and the maze 
of complications into which we were plunged. 

Then, too, there was the great difficulty of operat- 
ing in a foreign country whose language and customs 
were unknown to the great majority of our men. 
Finally we had to expand our little peace organisa- 
tion into an immense and elastic overseas expedition 
that would take its full part in helping to defeat the 
mightiest of all military machines that had been forty 
years in the making and which was still going strong. 

Such was the seemingly impossible task that con- 
fronted us in April, 19 17. To-day the impossible has 
been made possible. The American Army that holds 
its well-won place in the battle line of freedom; the 
unbroken chain of supply and transport behind, 
stretching from Alsace-Lorraine to San Francisco, is 
the answer that Yankee resource, energy and patriot- 
ism have made to the Great Call. How has it been 
done? 

Come with me to the little French town which 
houses the General Headquarters of the A. E. F. and 
I will show you both the mainspring and the inspira- 
tion. In a simple office, in a weather-beaten build- 
ing that flies the American and French flags at its 
gate and whose stone walls have echoed with the 
swords and spurs of many generations of French sol- 
diers in the making, sits the erect, serious, keen-eyed 
man whose broad shoulders bear the chief burden 
of responsibility of our armies abroad. General 
Pershing foresaw what would and did happen. 'To 
foresee, " said the French philosopher, "is to rule." 



28 S. O. S. 

In this military statesmanship lies our safety and our 
success in France. It was his grave eyes that beheld 
the vision of American opportunity, and it has had a 
rich fulfilment. The simple reason why we met every 
extraordinary and unexpected demand upon us is that 
our facilities are so elastic as to be capable of almost 
indefinite expansion. 

Had they been rigid — that is, limited to the esti- 
mate of our original overseas force — we, and prob- 
ably the whole Allied Cause, might have been lost. 
As it was they stood the well-nigh incredible strain 
in amazing fashion and reveal the Commander-in- 
Chief both as Seer and Soldier. 

Let us go back and see just what happened. When 
the "G in C," as the head of the army is called, ar- 
rived in France in June, 19 17, the war situation was 
apparently satisfactory. The British were well estab- 
lished up the Somme; everywhere the French held 
their own; the Italians were pushing confidently on. 
An optimist would have said: "All is well." The 
programme of our expeditionary force, then set for 
500,000 men, seemed to be ample for all needs. 

But General Pershing saw beyond the security of 
that hopeful hour. Russia had begun to crack and in 
the Slav disintegration that followed lay disaster for 
us all. France was bled white ; England was combing 
out her man-power; America was the last, the only, 
reserve. The final brunt would be hers. 

So this far-seeing chieftain looked ahead to the 
contingency that might arise, not in a year but in 
two or three. How wise was his foresight was amply 



Gkmsrai Rbadcuatitsm 

> Expkuitiu>*h» Poncsa 




the S.O.8., similar to his work oovoring tl 

British Ar-.^-. ?he various chapters will cc 
in the Saturday Evening Post. 

Please afford hin'all necessary i 
ct of his investigation. 






Coazianding Seneral, 



(T 



3.G.S., Aoerican S. F. 



d^<L cut /^^Z^y^?*^^ 

FAC-SIMILE 07 THE ORIGINAL ORDER ISSUED AT AMERICAN GENERAL 
HEADQUARTERS AUTHORIZING MR. MARCOSSON'S INVESTIGATION OF 
THE S. O. S. 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 29 

proved by subsequent events. In less than twelve 
months from the time of his advent Italy's reverse had 
been registered, Russia, prey to anarchy and mis- 
guided uplift, had made her obscene peace with the 
Kaiser; the German offensive had swept the British 
down the Somme; once more Paris was the target of 
attack. 

Out of that encircling gloom flashed Lloyd George's 
famous "Hurry, hurry" appeal to America, and it was 
not sent in vain. Like those hosts of the 'Sixties who 
marched to Father Abraham "Five hundred thousand 
strong," the Yankees came sailing over the sea. Every 
schedule was quadrupled; all original estimates and 
plans went by the board. A steady stream of khaki 
poured into France. What was more, it was debarked, 
supplied and rushed up the line and all because the sup- 
ply and transport machine, conceived in foresight and 
builded in wisdom, met the test. It made Chateau- 
Thierry, Saint Mihiel and all that has followed pos- 
sible. 

Those heroes of pick and spade and derrick who 
had toiled in port and supply depot had their full 
hour of compensation. They saw the original army 
of 500,000 swell into a million and then reach far 
beyond, and no man went unfed. 

The machine which began with bare hands and stout 
hearts has grown to a giant with limbs of titanic 
strength. It is not only working for this war but for 
generations unborn. In the scope and permanency of 
its structure lies the real earnest of our endeavour 
in France. Its parallel is the mass of stone and 



3 o S. O. S. 

concrete war buildings rising in Washington not 
reared for to-day but for the future. 

Just before I started on my investigation of the 
American army I spent the night with old friends 
at British General Headquarters in France. We dis- 
cussed our immense supply preparations which inter- 
ested them immensely. Suddenly a grizzled General 
with a foot of service ribbons on the breast of his tunic 
said: 

"Your people are working on the theory that the 
war is going on indefinitely. It's amazing." 

He hit the American nail on the head, for this is 
precisely what we are doing in France. The Domain 
of Supply and Transport which we are about to ex- 
plore is a vast business institution that, while dedicated 
to war, is bound to have a tremendous significance 
with peace. 

The tiny acorn which burst forth as the American 
Expeditionary Forces was planted in an environment 
that was in sharp contrast with the forest of effort 
that it has produced to-day. In that precarious June 
of last year when General Pershing and his handful 
of fellow officers faced the task of creating a system 
of combat and supply overseas, the offices of the expe- 
dition were in a modest building in the Rue Constan- 
tine in Paris. Almost within the shadow of the stately 
and gilded dome of the Invalides which shelters the 
dust of the great Napoleon was born the whole organ- 
isation which has become a prop of the war. Here 
first of all the General Staff in France was created. 
Later, in a back room and at a conference presided 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 31 

over by the Commander-in-Chief in person, what is 
to-day the Services of Supply came into being. It was 
not originally known by its present comprehensive 
designation. It had various titles and functions. Its 
career is studded with picturesque happenings and 
striking personalities, and they are all part of our 
narrative. 

After four years of war the average reader need 
not be told that in any army in the field there are two 
separate and distinct organisations. One is that sec- 
tion which fights and which is known as the Combat 
Army; the other is the equally necessary wing which 
mans the Lines of Communications and in which Sup- 
ply and Transport have their all-important part. 
Down these lines flow the life sustenance of the fight- 
ing man. 

At that first meeting in Paris to which I have just 
referred was born an institution, typically American 
in character and which is the very rock on which our 
whole activity abroad is reared. It grew out of the 
peculiar handicaps under which our overseas expedi- 
tion laboured from the start. Up to that time the most 
difficult supply and transport problem of the war was 
Britain's. She had to carry troops and supplies to 
Mesopotamia, Salonika, Egypt and France and main- 
tain those forces. But compared with our require- 
ments and problems abroad this was not so overwhelm- 
ingly difficult, because the great mass of her overseas 
troops were in France and never fighting more than 
a hundred and fifty miles at the outside from their 
home ports. The Australians, to be sure, had to 



32 S. O. S. 

come five thousand miles from their native bush and 
range, but they only carry their initial supplies. Eng- 
land furnishes the rest from her home and other de- 
pots. Although a considerable portion of the British 
army supply is gathered from different parts of the 
world and is subject to the sea menace, she was not 
absolutely dependent upon these foreign sources. 

With America it was different. We were up against 
the staggering proposition of not only conveying all 
our troops over three thousand miles of danger-ridden 
sea but likewise carrying the great bulk of our food, 
equipment and munitions the same way. Our system 
of supply had to be break-down proof. How to ac- 
complish this was the proposition put up to that group 
of pioneers of America abroad who sat around the 
table in that dingy back room of the Rue Constantine. 
No wonder they thought of the intrepid little soldier 
whose dust reposed just across the way and who like- 
wise had his troubles with food and transport many, 
many miles from home. 

These men knew that long before they could even 
dream of joining the smoke-enveloped battle-line of 
democracy they must settle the all-important question 
of a continuous subsistence supply. Emergency — 
that unfailing speeder-up of idea and event — came to 
their rescue. At that round table was devised the 
remarkable plan known as Automatic Supply which 
is the essence of our whole overseas system. Just as 
printing is the art preservative of art, so is this scheme 
the means preservative of our lives and our fortunes 
abroad. 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 33 

To grasp it fully you must understand the very 
obvious fact that in war a reserve of food and sup- 
plies is all essential. That ancient and familiar saying 
that armies fight on their stomachs is as true to-day 
in the era of machine-gun, poison gas, wireless, aero- 
planes and tanks as it was when cave men fought with 
stone weapons. The strength of the army food re- 
serve depends upon the distance of the fighting force 
from its base. With the British Expeditionary Force 
the so-called fixed food reserve is thirty days. This 
means that all the huge supply depots in France and 
England (I shall use the British Expeditionary Force 
in France for the contrast), a quantity of food, fuel, 
and forage equal to thirty days' consumption by man 
and beast is maintained. No matter what happens 
this reserve must be kept up. It is the insurance 
against enemy action, break down or delay in trans- 
port — any of the many emergencies that rise up in war 
and knock down the best laid plans and incidentally 
destroy precious supplies. 

But England in France, as I have already pointed 
out, is only a comparatively short distance from her 
home reserves. A short trip across the English Chan- 
nel can rectify any dislocation in her food communica- 
tions. What were we to do three thousand miles from 
our home ports and factories? 

No one could tell then, any more than they can 
tell now, just what the submarine would do. Not be- 
ing a heedless optimist General Pershing, together 
with his advisers, took no chances. They assumed the 
worst would happen, so they framed up the famous 



34 S. O. S. 

plan which I have referred to as the Automatic Sup- 
ply. This provides the unfailing and yet flexible 
meal ticket of the A. E. F. 

By this procedure our whole food supply — and for 
that matter all munitions and supplies, even a whole 
railway system from spike to station — renews itself 
automatically, and therefore without the formality of 
special requisitions for stores. In the simplest way 
this is the way the system works: 

For every unit of 25,000 troops that goes to France 
— whether they arrive in one convoy or in detached 
groups — a four months' supply of food is also sent at 
the same time from the United States. What amounts 
to a thirty days' supply goes with the men while a 
ninety days' reserve is shipped coincidentally. This 
ninety days' reserve becomes the backbone of our ef- 
fort. It may not land at the same port as the unit 
for which it is designated but it reaches France and 
becomes part of the general food reserve. No matter 
how many units of 25,000 men may leave the United 
States this ninety days' reserve becomes their travel- 
ling companion, near or distant. It is on the ocean at 
the same time. 

By making this reserve cover ninety days we have 
trebled the British quantity and taken into considera- 
tion what those wise men who framed the system 
had in mind, namely, the very worst that the sub- 
marine could do. The destruction of a whole month's 
or even two months' supply could not mean disaster 
for us. 

This process is technically known as the Initial Sup- 



THE BIRTH OF THE S. O. S. 35 

ply. It means that with the Automatic Supply which 
I shall describe in a moment, sufficient food, with the 
exception of fresh beef and a few minor ration com- 
ponents, is constantly kept in France to last our whole 
overseas force four months. 

But troops must eat and at the same time the integ- 
rity of this ninety days' reserve must be maintained. 
How is it done? Here is where the Automatic Sup- 
ply comes in. Every month there is shipped from the 
United States sufficient food to feed our overseas 
force for thirty days. It is in units of the needs of 
25,000 men. This might be called the standing order 
of the army and is for current consumption. It 
moves like clock-work every thirty days. It is pre- 
cisely as if a housekeeper had left a permanent order 
with her grocer to send her on the first day of every 
month enough flour, tinned goods, salt, pepper, vege- 
tables — in fact all her kitchen needs — for thirty days 
and he scrupulously followed instructions. If he is 
a good grocer she never has to renew the order save 
when her family increases. The Acting Quartermaster 
General at Washington, Brigadier-General R. E. 
Wood, is the good grocer ; he never misses a shipment 
to France. For every unit of 25,000 men that set foot 
upon France he simply chalks up another increase to 
that immense standing order. Nothing can be sim- 
pler than this system. 

All supplies are not, and cannot be automatic. Every 
hour of the day and night in France some emergency 
leads to unexpected demands. Take Ordnance. A 
big push may use up an immense amount of ammuni- 



36 S. O. S. 

tion and cut into the fixed reserve which is based on 
the daily needs of all guns. Take Construction. The 
unexpected advent of troops in certain regions who 
need barracks, together with the demand made on 
the light and standard gauge railway for extensions, 
may consume material far beyond the widest provi- 
sion made in advance. All this must be renewed and 
at once, and it is done through so-called Exceptional 
Requisitions, or Demands, as they are called by the 
British. The articles thus obtained are termed Ex- 
ceptional Supplies, and are only sent in response to 
a special requisition made on the War Department by 
the Supply Service in the field. 

Here in brief is the crux of our supply system in 
France. An extraordinary and unprecedented remedy 
which has proved to be not only submarine proof but 
has stood up against every tremendous demand made 
upon it. With a knowledge of this bulwark of the 
soldier's stomach — the fundamental war precaution — 
we can now proceed to the story of the complete army 
organisation in France which is necessary before we 
can explain the concrete workings of the Services of 
Supply. 



II — The Business of War 



IF those meetings of General Pershing and his first 
colleagues in the Rue Constantine in Paris had 
only hatched out the Initial and Automatic Sup- 
ply systems they would have been historic. But they 
did much more. In the creation of the General Staff 
of the A. E. F. they laid the foundation of the whole 
close-knit combat, supply, and transport scheme which 
enabled the A. E. F. to assume its full share of the 
terrific burden of war. 

If you know anything about war you also know 
that everything radiates from the Staff. Individual 
initiative is only possible or effective in the emergency 
of battle or with a sudden breakdown in transport. 
The successful conduct of modern war is the result 
of team-work, co-ordination, the fitting together of 
many units. It is the product of many closely-at- 
tuned minds. The real and unadvertised work of 
war therefore is done behind closed doors. Its secrecy 
and silence are in contrast with the crash and carnage 
of the tragic tumult it produces. 

Let us take the General Staff at General Headquar- 
ters first. Although we have nothing to do with fight- 
ing, we must understand its functions, because they 
are duplicated to a large extent at the Headquarters 

37 



38 S. O. S. 

of the Services of Supply. This is as good a place 
as any to emphasise the fact that in France we have 
two absolutely separate armies, with entirely separate 
and completely equipped headquarters from a Com- 
manding General down. One is the General Head- 
quarters presided over by General Pershing, who is 
the supreme chief in France and whose job is fight- 
ing; the other is the Headquarters of the Services of 
Supply whose job is to sustain and equip those fight- 
ers. Each of these Headquarters has a General Staff 
similar in organisation although the body at General 
Headquarters is senior in authority and creates the 
larger policies which the Staff of the S. O. S. inter- 
prets. 

The staff at G. H. Q. has Hvq sections devoted to 
Administration, Intelligence, Operations (which is 
fighting), Co-ordination and Training. Originally 
these sections were known by these respective activi- 
ties. Subsequently the designations were changed. 
Administration became Gi. This is the Wholesaler 
and gets tonnage and personnel to France and also 
purchases in France. Intelligence, now known as G2, 
deals with all information about the enemy. It has 
ramified functions that range from censorship to 
counter-espionage. Operations, now G3, employs 
troops in the field. Co-ordination, which is G4, han- 
dles and distributes what Gi procures. But it does 
much more. It is the supreme standardiser, one of 
the most remarkable agencies that we have devised in 
the war. You will hear a great deal about it as we 
proceed with this narrative. Training (which has be- 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 39 

come G5) trains the personnel which Gi gets to 
France. Here is a bird's-eye view of the General Staff, 
which is the Board of Directors of the Business of 
War. All these sections are tied up to Chief of Staff, 
who is the link between the work of the army and the 
Commander-in-Chief. 

The Staff meets every morning in the office of the 
Chief of Staff, who at G. H. Q. is Major General 
James W. McAndrew, just as the directors of the 
Standard Oil Company used to assemble daily at 26 
Broadway. It enables them to keep abreast with what 
is going on. What is equally important, every head 
of a department knows what the other heads are do- 
ing. In this knowledge lies power in war. This war, 
more than any other, has proved the value of co-ordi- 
nation. It was not until Marshal Foch became in fact 
the head of a United Allied Command that we made 
definite and what seems to be permanent progress. 
Up to that time every big Allied army went practically 
"on its own," and the Germans wisely capitalised this 
lack of perfect team-work. The Germans have always 
excelled in Staff work. 

With a small army this elaborate staff system is not 
necessary. The heads of the various sections, that is, 
Operations, Supply, Transport and Intelligence, can 
go direct to their Commander-in-Chief and talk affairs 
over. But when that Commander is at the head of 
millions of men spread out over Lines of Communica- 
tion six hundred miles long this is impossible. He 
must have understudies to digest and co-ordinate the 
routine problems, dispose of the general Business of 



40 S. O. S. 

War, and leave him free to create and deal with the 
larger measures. The various sections thus become 
miniature minds of the "C. in C." who think and plan 
and sometimes execute for him. By an elaborate and 
comprehensive system of condensed diaries he knows 
just what they are doing each day. 

This Staff system at G. H. Q. and its functions 
are duplicated at the Headquarters of the Services of 
Supply except that only Gi, G2 and G4 are repre- 
sented. The S. O. S. has nothing to do with fighting, 
therefore it can dispense with G3 and G5. Its main 
sections are Gi and G4. 

Such, in brief, is the directing force that set up the 
America in France. Originally it was housed in 
Paris. As our troops began to arrive and our scope 
of supply widened those buildings in the French cap- 
ital proved insufficient. We needed more executive 
elbow room. Besides, it was becoming more and 
more important that General Pershing should be up 
where his army was beginning to assemble. In Sep- 
tember, 191 7, we established our General Headquarters 
at Chaumont, a French town in the North. There — 
and for the first time in the war — the Stars and Stripes 
were unfurled almost within sound of the guns. We 
had entered the Great Struggle at last! 

I went to those Headquarters not long after they 
had been opened. The drowsy little town still blinked 
at the unaccustomed sight of Americans in uniform; 
our troops were few; there was a sense of newness 
and crudeness. General Pershing and his colleagues 
were feeling their way through the enormous respon- 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 41 

sibilities that hemmed them in. Not so many miles 
away those pioneer divisions who blazed our way to 
France were shivering in their first billets. 

I went back last summer. The one-time sleepy 
town was a bee-hive ; the brown of our khaki vied with 
the verdure of the hillsides around; the roads every- 
where were alive with our transport; the General 
Headquarters had a seasoned and business-like look; 
we had spilled our blood on the soil of France; you 
got the thrill and the sense of actual war participation. 
In the same office where I had seen him before sat 
that grave-eyed Commander-in-Chief, still modest, 
still unassuming, still consecrated to the task which 
in the intervening twelve months had made him a 
world figure. 

In those General Headquarters, now the nerve cen- 
tre of our fighting, the Services of Supply as at pres- 
ent constituted were organised. When General Persh- 
ing moved to the North the Chiefs of Supply event- 
ually followed. They were marshalled under the head 
of "Lines of Communication." As our armies grew 
and took their place in the line the need of a concen- 
trated supply establishment became evident. It was 
felt — and wisely — that with our swift expansion 
G. H. Q. should be free to devote itself to operations. 

General Pershing therefore appointed a Board con- 
sisting of (I use their present ranks) Brigadier Gen- 
eral Johnson Hagood, Colonel Avery Andrews, Briga- 
dier General Frank McCoy, Brigadier General Robert 
Davis and Major Pierce Wetherell, to devise a plan to 
this end. The net result was that the Supply Depart- 



42 S. O. S. 

ments were divorced from G. H. Q. and moved to 
Tours. General Headquarters were now free to con- 
centrate on fighting while in that charming little city 
on the banks of the Loire, in the heart of the Chateau 
country, where Balzac and Rabelais were born ; where 
Joan of Arc came in shining armour in the crowded 
hour of her triumph and where, oddly enough, the 
Hun of other days got his final reverse, became the 
capital of the Domain of Supply. 

It was early this year when the American flag was 
officially broken out at Tours over a quadrangle of 
French barracks sentinelled by trees and with the 
usual large parade ground in the centre. But it was 
a much larger kingdom than Supply and Transport 
that took up its abode there. Under reorganisation 
the Services of Supply annexed the services of Quar- 
termaster Corps, Ordnance, Gas, Air, Engineering, 
Construction, Forestry, Railways and Roads, Medical, 
Mechanical Transport, Signals and Communications, 
Postal and Express, War Risk Insurance; in fact, 
every detail that contributed to the upkeep, the safety, 
the combat, and the renewal of the armies in the field. 
Even Graves Registration, the chronicle of that last 
sad chapter in the life of the soldier, found refuge 
under its broad and comprehending wings. 

The first Commanding General was Major General 
F. J. Kernan, who developed the whole scheme of 
what was for a brief time called the Services of the 
Rear, and which is now the unshakable "S. O. S.," 
one of the prides, even as it is also the backbone, of 
the whole American Expeditionary Force. To tell 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 43 

its story therefore is to describe the activities of every- 
thing American in France except that which hap- 
pens in trench and field. 

Nowhere in this war will you find such a self- 
contained Empire as is presented by the Amer- 
ican Services of Supply* indeed — the whole A. E. F. 
It is unique in the annals of military organisation. 
With the French there is always Paris to suggest or 
to change ; with the British, the War Office in White- 
hall lies only a few hours' journey across the Chan- 
nel and many miles of red tape join it to General 
Headquarters. But with the American force Wash- 
ington is thousands of miles away in fact and in domi- 
nation. The distance is too great and time in war is 
too precious to refer everything to the home powers 
that be. They have wisely reposed a confidence in the 
leader of our armies abroad that has been amply 
justified by his achievements. Here you have the anti- 
dote against the costly disasters, bred by the political 
interference that hampered great American generals 
from Washington down the line through Grant to 
Shafter. 

Geographically the Services of Supply includes all 
Continental France and Great Britain for our supply 
tentacles have now spread out in many directions. 
The domain is divided into nine Sections and two in- 
dependent Districts, which are Tours and Paris. With 
one exception (England) all these sections are in 
France. 

Each of the French ports that we use is the nucleus 
or capital of a Section which also includes some of 



44 S. O. S. 

the adjacent territory. Midway between the coast 
and the front is the Huge Intermediate Section, while 
still nearer the fighting line is the Advance Section. 
They are all joined by American built and American 
operated communications. 

In examining the organisation of these Sections 
you get the first hint of that self-sufficiency which 
is such an outstanding feature of our army structure 
abroad. Every Section is in command of a General 
who has the necessary Administrative and Technical 
Staffs. He has absolute control of all matters of dis- 
cipline, police, and sanitation in his bailiwick and has 
general supervision over all technical activities car- 
ried on there. It is a little sovereign State. If a ques- 
tion arises that touches or involves a neighbouring Sec- 
tion it becomes, like matters of Interstate Commerce 
in the United States, a question of Federal jurisdic- 
tion and goes up to the Commanding General of the 
Services of Supply who is the Chief of all these sub- 
sidiary Generals. 

It is just as if we had established a United States 
of Supply overseas with Tours as the Washington. 
As a matter of fact, Tours is the American capital 
of France. The Commanding General of the S. O. S. 
is a sort of transplanted President whose only higher 
authority is the Commander-in-Chief of the American 
Expeditionary Force and whose Staff Officer he is. 

Looking at the organisation from another angle 
(familiar to most Americans), you can see it in terms 
of the military arrangement of the United States in 
peace times. Following this analogy, the Headquar- 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 45 

ters of the S. 0. S. at Tours corresponds to the War 
Department at Washington. The different Sections 
are like the various Departments such as the Depart- 
ment of the East, the Southern Department or the 
Department of the Southeast. Each of these Depart- 
ments in the United States has a Commanding Gen- 
eral who corresponds to the General in charge of one 
of our foreign Sections. The two independent Dis- 
tricts (Tours and Paris) bear the same relation to 
the whole overseas organisation that the United States 
Military Academy at West Point bears to the home 
structure, which comes directly under the authority 
of the War Department. 

In addition to control over the Generals of the vari- 
ous Sections the Commanding General of the Services 
of Supply exercises a stewardship over the Chief of 
every Service that makes up his immense domain. 
The head and staff of all Departments, save Light 
Railways, which are a necessary adjunct of fighting, 
are quartered in and about that picturesque quadran- 
gle in Tours, and are accessible at any hour of the 
day or night for reference or discussion. 

Such is the Supply World over which Major Gen- 
eral James G. Harbord, who succeeded General Ker- 
nan as Commanding General of the S. O. S., presides 
to-day. He is big of bone, smooth of face, alive with 
humour — a self-made soldier risen from the ranks 
and with a trail of active service that stretches from 
the Philippines to the bloody fields of France. There 
is no mistaking his power and punch. It is written 
in a square and unyielding jaw and in a determination 



46 S. O. S. 

that the Germans learned to their cost when his divi- 
sion helped to block their way to Paris last July. It 
was as Chief of Staff to General Pershing in those 
heart-breaking days when first we set up military 
shop abroad that Harbord wrote his wisdom and his 
foresight into our overseas preparation. He can lead 
and he can rule. He is the highest type of the Sol- 
dier-Administrator. Study his task and you find 
that, as the slogan of the S. O. S. well says, "All the 
fighting is not done at the front." 

He operates in precisely the same way that General 
Pershing holds forth at Headquarters, although his 
task is somewhat more varied and complex. The 
Commander-in-Chief is mainly concerned, so far as 
active duties are concerned, with fighting. The tools 
of this bloody trade — mainly men and munitions — are 
placed at his disposal. General Harbord, on the other 
hand, has to deal with the intricate problems of the 
procurement, distribution and maintenance of these 
tools of war. Every ton of freight and every Amer- 
ican soldier that enters France must come through 
one of the ports under his jurisdiction. They must 
be classified, stored or moved to their proper station. 
An endless chain of facilities and a complete and 
sleepless control and supervision are required. 

Yet every morning there is laid upon his desk a 
sheet of paper on which is typed the total number of 
American troops, civilian employes and prisoners of 
war in every Section together with all American 
troops with the British or French; the total number 
of mouths fed by the A. E. F.; the precise amount 




MAJOR GENERAL JAMES G. HARBORD 

Commanding General of the S. O. S, A. E. F m 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 47 

of food on hand at every supply depot in days and 
rations; the number of animals in France and the 
quantity of hay, oats and bran available for them; 
the exact quantity of ammunition in reserve in terms 
of specific calibres; the total ship tonnage unloaded 
the day before; the number of cars loaded for ship- 
ment and the tonnage in them ; the cargoes on every 
ship in every port we use in France or England; and 
the number of beds — empty or occupied — in our hos- 
pitals together with their crisis capacity which is the 
total hospitalisation in case of emergency. In a 
word, this marvellous sheet, called the Daily State of 
Supply, is the up-to-the-hour epitome of the whole 
American situation in France. 

More than this General Harbord, who is not tem- 
peramentally inclined to be tied to a desk, spends 
three or four days every week — sometimes more — 
travelling up and down his Supply World in his spe- 
cial train which has sleeping, dining and office cars 
and is a Headquarters on Wheels. He pops in on 
Section Generals at their offices; makes sudden de- 
scents upon loading gangs at the docks or construc- 
tion units in the field. He can stop his train any- 
where in France, hitch up his telephone or telegraph 
instruments to American wires strung on American 
poles and talk to General Pershing at General Head- 
quarters or any one else in the country. How are 
all these miracles achieved? 

Like the rearing of our whole physical structure in 
France, there is no magic or mystery about it. It 
all results from the fact that we have built up a 



48 S. O. S. 

compact and co-ordinated system for the conduct of 
the Services of Supply that is distinctly American in 
swiftness and in efficiency. It is simply part of the 
Business of War, American Brand. To a war that 
was believed to express the last word in science and 
organisation we have brought new wrinkles. 

General Harbord's freedom of action and the re- 
markable grip on the American situation in France 
as revealed on the Daily State of Supply are made 
possible first of all by staff work. The General Staff 
of the Commanding General of the Services of Sup- 
ply, as you have already been told, only includes three 
Sections — Gi, G2 and G4 — because he has no prob- 
lems of combat or training. Each of these Sections 
has a head, designated as an Assistant Chief of Staff. 
In charge of Gi is Col. J. B. Cavanaugh; in command 
of G2 is Lieutenant Colonel Cabot Ward who was once 
Park Commissioner of Greater New York and a fine 
type of Reserve or Temporary Officer who is rendering 
conspicuous service in the war, while Col. H. C. 
Smither is at the head of that all-useful and uni- 
versal G4. 

These Assistant Chiefs in turn report to a Chief of 
Staff — Brigadier General Johnson Hagood. Clean of 
limb and face and a seasoned veteran of field and staff 
service despite his apparent youth, he is a master or- 
ganiser and a live wire. Under his stimulation the 
General Staff takes the burden of routine from the 
shoulders of General Harbord just as the Staff at 
the G. H. Q. lightens the way of the Commander-in- 
Chief. 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 49 

The Assistants are in constant touch with the Chief 
of Staff and the Commanding General himself. It is 
their duty to act in his name on the bulk of the execu- 
tive questions that arise, and they are many and com- 
plex. Hence he is free to move about his Kingdom. 
As at G. H. Q., you have a small group of understudy 
minds, although at Tours they have to cope with an 
infinite variety of subjects. These Assistants are 
guided in making decisions by their knowledge of the 
expressed desires of the Commanding General with 
regard to policies. Hence they must be men of keen 
intelligence and quick to grasp significances. 

The Section of G2 is a minor one in the administra- 
tion of the Services of Supply. Therefore the bur- 
den of the Staff labours and responsibilities fall upon 
the Chief of Staff and the heads of Gi and G4. In 
general terms — we will take up the specific work later 
— Gi has authority on all matters of administration, 
organisation and procurement of personnel and ma- 
terial from the United States, which includes the vast 
tonnage question, while G4 deals with construction, 
transportation and supply, having particularly in mind 
the co-ordination of all these activities. Both Gi and 
G4 connect up with every unit in the Services of 
Supply. By telegraph and telephone and daily reports 
they keep in constant communication. 

Let us now sit in with the General Staff at its daily 
morning meeting. You will get such a demonstration 
of snappy team-work as to make you sit up. The 
walls of the office of the Chief of Staff — like those 
of the Commanding General — reflect the spirit of our 



go S. O. S. 

organisation and the way it is swung. First of all 
you will see the great Supply Map of France criss- 
crossed with our lines of communication. At first 
glance you may think that this is a picture puzzle, but 
on closer investigation you see that these winding and 
coloured avenues are studded with symbols. You see 
stars in circles, ships, tents, crosses, coffee pots, build- 
ings. You are not long in finding out what they mean. 
At the lower left-hand corner is a key to the puzzle. 
Each symbol has a meaning all its own. The star 
in a circle indicates the General Headquarters; the 
ship shows the location of a port that we use; the 
tent is the site of an instruction camp; the black 
cross reveals a base hospital; the white cross a rest 
station; the coffee pot a coffee station for travelling 
troops; the engine a locomotive repair shop; the 
freight car a car erection site; the bumper a railway 
regulation yard ; an axe a forestry camp ; the propeller 
an aviation camp; the bursting shell an ammunition 
depot; a tiny house means a refrigerating plant; a 
black naval pennant a Section Headquarters, and so 
on. In other words, you can look at this map and 
see at a glance the scope and extent of all our activi- 
ties in France, and what and where they are. 

On the wall are also square yards of charts and 
diagrams for this is a war of organisation all put 
down on specifications and blue prints long before a 
wheel is turned or a shot fired. It is one of the many 
sheets Mars has taken from the Book of Big Busi- 
ness. I have seen square miles of army diagrams 
in this war, but I have never seen any that were more 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 51 

concrete or comprehensive than those used by the 
Services of Supply. Every Service has its master 
chart; every subordinate section has its own little 
sheet. Put three men together in an army office in 
France, and the first thing they do is to create a 
little chart of their organisation. Nor is it a wasted 
effort. A great master of American industry once 
said : "Teach with the eye," so he put signs all over 
his factory. The man who knows just what he has 
to do and where he belongs seldom makes mistakes. 
Hence the value of the chart in the Business of War. 

A single detail in General Hagood's office reveals 
the spirit of the organisation and why it does things. 
Over the large clock hangs a placard containing this 
inscription: HURRY UP— C' EST LA GUERRE 
("It is the war"). It reminded me of another sign 
hung up somewhere on our Lines of Communication 
by a bureau chief who had once been in the Coast 
Artillery. It proclaimed the warning familiar to all 
coast travellers: "Cable Crossing. Do Not Anchor 
Here." He was determined that his visitors should 
waste none of his time. 

General Hagood is at his desk every morning at 
eight o'clock. These army heads are early to work 
and they stay late. There are no office hours' in The 
Business of War. The Chief of Staff finds on his 
desk what is officially known as the Diary. It is a 
compact resume, a complete catalogue of S. O. S. 
events, compiled by G4, of every important proceed- 
ing of the day before. This Diary, which is as rep- 



52 S. O. S. 

resentative a piece of scientific organisation as the 
Daily Supply State, is arranged under headings. 

Under Troop Movements you find: "The Nth 
Division has been moved to the X Training Camp'' ; 
under Hospitalisation, "The construction of a ten 
thousand bed hospital has been ordered at Z"; under 
Quartermaster Corps : "The Chief Quartermaster has 
been ordered to turn over ioo carloads of sugar to 
the French"; under Remounts: "Eight thousand 
horses are now at the Remount Camp at W" ; under 
Construction: "Five new warehouses have been 
started at Blank Supply Depot," and so on until every 
item of large value has been epitomised and chron- 
icled. 

At 8.30 o'clock General Hagood has his daily con- 
ference with the heads of the Sections. Once more 
you have the Directors' meeting of the Business of 
war. With the Diary before him, which he has al- 
ready read, the Chief of Staff asks the why and the 
wherefore of the various steps and changes enumer- 
ated in it. In the case of the movement of the Nth 
Division he may ask : "Why did not these troops go 
into barracks?" or with the item relating to the Chief 
Quartermaster he may inquire: "Is this in accord- 
ance with the terms of our new food agreement with 
the French?" In the matter of those eight thousand 
horses the query may be: "Does this complete the 
project for this Remount Camp?" while referring to 
the construction of the new warehouses he may ask : 
"Is this depot proceeding towards construction on 
schedule time?" 




BRIGADIER GENERAL JOHNSON IIAGOOD (Left) 

Chief of StaJJ of the S. 0. S., A. E. F 

and the Author 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 53 

I cite these questions to show, first of all, how the 
Chief puts an unerring probe into everything that is 
done; second, by knowing just what is being done 
within twenty-four hours after it has been started 
he can rectify any mistake before it has gone too far. 
This is especially true of large construction such as 
barracks and warehouses. It also applies with special 
importance to the shifting of the labour battalions. 

One great value of this Diary and the operations 
that contribute to it, is that it disposes of matters at 
once. In the old army day and way every individual 
item that I have mentioned (and in fact everything 
that referred to any phase of army work), not only 
had to be mulled over and indorsed by a dozen people 
but literally had to break its way through miles of 
red tape. Instead of swift action there was intermi- 
nable delay which clogged the wheels of progress. 

In the case of the S. O. S. the Chief of Staff, ex- 
pressing the desires of the Commanding General for 
whom he acts, delegates authority to his subordinates, 
the heads of the various Sections. They act upon their 
own judgment and the information they possess, and 
the result is that there is no hampering in effort. 
Now you can see why the Commanding General is 
free to move about his domain and also why the 
Chief of Staff likewise has a clean desk and can turn 
at once to any large emergency that arises. It all 
combines for a flexible system of supervision and 
supply. The men at the helm are not desk-bound, 
and the myriad of personnel and material they con- 
trol are equally elastic. 



54 S. O. S. 

The Diary is only one of a series of reports which 
deal with the Progress of Supply. As a sort of corol- 
lary to the Daily State of Supply is a document called 
The Daily Situation, which is a miniature typewrit- 
ten newspaper, prepared by G4 and which goes to 
the Commanding General and the Chief of Staff with 
the Daily State. It is a General Summary of vital 
problems that cannot be discussed in the Diary, which 
deals only with actual events. It details, for example, 
such emergencies as temporary congestions in the rail- 
way regulating stations. It also deals with the tie-ups 
in troop traffic, with tonnage difficulties, with troop 
arrivals, with the ammunition situation, indeed all the 
many unexpected emergencies that try the soul of the 
army administrator operating three thousand miles 
from his home base and in a country where he must 
wrestle with strange laws and employ public carriers 
that have systems and regulations not altogether 
geared up to swift and strenuous American ways. 

When any one of these contingencies develops the 
Chief of Staff or the head of G4, or both, at once 
calls a meeting of the Chief of the Service involved 
and his principal associates and threshes it out. Thus 
he gets at the specialists who know exactly what they 
can do and who have the wherewithal to do it. 

By now you will have gathered that both Gi and 
G4 are important links in the American Army ma- 
chine. It is high time therefore that we look into 
their ramified functions. They unfold a system of 
scrutiny and co-ordination that is little less than a 
triumph of organisation. Nothing in the whole rec- 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 55 



ord of army administration surpasses them in the 
perfection and execution of detail. Yet it was all 
conceived and is, in the main, dominated and oper- 
ated by regular soldiers who have come from camp 
and field to sweat over charts, telegrams and sta- 
tistics. Again you discover that all the fighting is 
not at the front — that war is work and worry. 

We will begin with Gi. Although it deals with 
administration and organisation, its chief work is 
procurement of men and material from the United 
States. Here you touch the supreme problem of the 
A. E. F., which is tonnage. So far as the United 
States are affected, this is a War of Tonnage. Every 
square foot of cargo space is precious and must be 
utilised to the last cubic inch. Every service in France 
wants all the tonnage it can get. The movement of 
troops and therefore their needs, exceeds all original 
estimates. The furnace of war must be kept fuelled. 
The lot of Gi therefore is not an easy one. 

Since there is only a certain amount of tonnage 
available it follows that it must be allotted, or "allo- 
cated" as the army phrase goes, to the best possible 
advantage. This allocation is the pivot around which 
Gi works. Now we get to the first actual link with 
Washington which, through the Ship-Control Com- 
mittee of the Shipping Board, is the Tonnage Pro- 
vider. On the tenth of every month Gi in France 
wires to Major General George W. Goethals, assist- 
ant Chief of Staff, to find out how much tonnage is 
available for France the next month. He wires back 
the amount. For the sake of illustration let us say 



56 S. O. S. 

that it is 500,000 tons. This figure then becomes a 
sort of target of attack, because all overseas demands 
are focussed on it. It is like a cake set out for con- 
sumption before a hungry crowd. Everybody wants 
to get as big a slice as possible. The troubles of 
Gi begin. 

The allocation of tonnage is based on the Require- 
ments of the various army services abroad. The task 
therefore is to balance all these requirements so that 
every need will be met and in the priority of that 
need. Hence Priority, which has come to be such 
an important factor in Industry as well as War, takes 
its station in the big game. 

This is what happens: If Gi finds that 500,000 
tons of shipping are available it will allot, let us say 
for the simplest explanation, 250,000 tons to the 
Quartermaster's Corps; 100,000 tons to the Medical 
Corps, 100,000 tons to the Engineers, and 50,000 tons 
to Mechanical Transport. There are of course many 
other services, but these four will serve our purpose. 

Every head of a Service now makes up his Prior- 
ity Schedule in the order of the urgency of his needs. 
In the general priority programme Food, Fuel, Forage 
and Clothing always come first. In our hypothetical 
case the Quartermaster has 250,000 tons to his credit. 
He cannot touch that fixed reserve of ninety days. 
Likewise the monthly automatic supply must be kept 
moving. On the other hand, he has a host of other 
supplies to obtain. Therefore he must do some jug- 
gling. He must determine whether rolling kitchens 
should come ahead of army wagons; if jam should 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 57 

have precedence over overcoats, and if vinegar is 
more important than olive oil. In the same way the 
Chief Surgeon must decide whether arnica outranks 
castor oil; the Director of Mechanical Transport must 
determine if the bulk of his space is to be used for 
trucks instead of passenger cars, while the Chief 
Engineer must decide whether fabricated buildings 
or construction tools have the precedence. I have only- 
used one or two typical items. As a matter of fact, 
many thousands enter into the combined tonnage esti- 
mates of the A. E. F. 

All these requisitions, made up in the order of their 
priorities, go to Gi, which censors them, and then 
transmits them to the United States by cable, which 
leaves France not later than the middle of the month. 
This means that the Requisitions for July shipment 
must go by June 15th. Requisitions for replacements 
of men are made in exactly the same way, and there 
is a priority for human beings just as there is for 
Food and Supplies. 

Gi, however, does not use up all its tonnage for 
these regular Requisitions. It must keep a surplus 
to meet the many exceptional, that is, unexpected de- 
mands. Then, too, the heads of Services frequently 
change their Requisitions, which means a fresh cable- 
gram to Washington from Gi. On the back of this 
cable, for office reference, you see this tonnage in 
cubic feet. Gi must know to the pound just how 
much of its space is being used up. All this actual 
allocation of tonnage is done by the Gi of the Services 
of Supply. The senior Gi at G. H. Q. is only used as 



58 S. O. S. 

a Supreme Court in shaping the larger tonnage prob- 
lems. 

Allotting space is only one phase of Gi's tonnage 
job. It must keep its finger on the pulse of the whole 
ceaseless ship movement between America and 
France. It must know how and when cargoes are 
unloaded and when ships start back. What is known 
as "Turn Around" — the round trip — must be made 
as quickly as possible both for troop and cargo ves- 
sels. Take a look at the so-called Tonnage Room, 
and you will see how this difficult task is made easy, 
visible and comprehensive. It is another revelation 
of what American system can accomplish when 
geared up to the Business of War. 

The walls of the Tonnage Room tell the story. 
They are hung with Charts of Tonnage Progress. 
You can stand in the centre of this Chamber of Rev- 
elation and see, in coloured lines, figures and diagrams 
that a child can understand, just what is going on in 
every port. There is a Chart for every port in 
France. Up and down one side of the Chart is a 
list of individual cargo items to be unloaded, such 
as lumber, coal, forage, railway supplies, foodstuffs, 
clothing, Quartermaster's supplies and construction 
material. A black line radiating from each item means 
its Receipts; a red line indicates the progress of the 
Evacuation of those Receipts. If the black line is 
longer than the red it shows that cargo is piling up 
at the ports. If these lines are the same length all 
is well and the stuff is moving out, which means no 
congestion. These lines are marked off in days and 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 59 

weeks. This is what might be called the Tonnage 
Movement Chart. Then there is a Chart which shows 
the work of all ports in items, days, weeks and 
months. From this you can see almost in a second 
if labour is doing its full job or where it is falling 
down. 

The same system is used to show the work of the 
troop transports. On a huge chart you see the name 
of the ship, the length of time it stayed in a French 
port indicated in black; the time on the ocean in red, 
and its stay in the American port in green. From this 
chart you can tell that the average "Turn Around'' 
of some troop transports has dropped from 68 to 35 
days. A similar system shows how the "Turn 
Around" of cargo ships has been reduced from 91 
to 71 days, while the round trip of animal transports 
has decreased from 84 to 60 days. These statistics 
not only indicate efficiency of effort at the ports, but 
form the basis of future tonnage arrangements and 
for the allotments of labour. 

These charts — and the many more that I could de- 
scribe^ — enable Gi to know at all times just how the 
whole unloading situation stands and on this situa- 
tion, so intimately linked with the tonnage problem, 
depends the life, the security, and the success of our 
cause abroad. Gi, I might add, has a representative 
in every Division and Corps in the field and at the 
Headquarters of each of the Armies. Everywhere 
its major task is to procure what those forces need. 

You have seen how Gi deals with the whole trying 
tonnage allocation. Its task in this matter, however, 



60 S. O. S. 

ends the moment men and material get to France. 
G4 then takes them up, establishes the priority by 
which they are distributed, and sees that they are de- 
livered to their proper station. This means that if 
the Engineers need construction material more than 
the Signal Corps require wires or poles, this mate- 
rial gets the right of way over the transportation 
facilities. It is up to G4 to maintain a saturated 
solution of all supplies in France and keep that solu- 
tion liquid and moving. 

Study the work of G4 and you find one of the most 
amazing details of our whole army situation. There 
is nothing like it in any of the many armies with 
whom I have been in contact in this war. It is not 
only the stabiliser of the war machine, but it is like- 
wise the door before whom all the complications and 
anxieties of the A. E. F. are laid. Its long arm 
reaches everywhere; it dwells with both the working 
and fighting armies; it is the regulating station for 
army policies — the Great Shock Absorber. Apply G4 
to any great American Corporation and it could pick 
up the threads of its activities overnight and carry 
them on to success. Like the host it succours it is 
tireless and sleepless. It must meet every emergency 
without batting an eye. Its story is a continuous 
record of dramatic event. 

Last July, when the swift German advance men- 
aced Paris, Brigadier General George Van Horn 
Moseley, head of G4 at G. H. Q., was on a tour of 
inspection in the field. General Pershing, as history 
now knows, had to hurl an army to the rescue and 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 61 

in a sector which was far outside the prescribed and 
equipped zone of our operations. That heroic little 
army had to be fed and supplied and without delay. 
On the spot General Moseley devised a whole system 
of emergency supply which kept pace with that army 
and met every need. A half a dozen telegrams did 
the job. In one he converted a certain Intermediate 
Storage Depot into an Advance Depot, charged with 
the task of feeding and supplying this fighting army. 
Another wire established a new regulating station; a 
third marshalled ammunition, transport of all kinds 
and reserves at certain designated points. In less 
than twenty-four hours this whole emergency scheme 
to provide every kind of war sustenance was in work- 
ing order. 

The army wanted some ration carts. The Advance 
Depot wired back that it had none, and did not know 
where they could be obtained, whereupon General 
Moseley sent back a telegram which said in substance : 
"It is not material where you get them but you must 
provide them.' , They came up the next day. This 
is the way the G4 works. 

Technically charged with "Construction, Transpor- 
tation and Supply," its organisation is so compact 
that not a single army service in France escapes its 
ministrations. Division A deals with Supply, Equip- 
ment, Mechanical Transport, Remounts, Fire Preven- 
tion, Salvage Service, Graves Registration, Supply 
Statistics and Office Administration. Under it the 
Diary of Activities that is laid on General Hagood's 
desk every morning and which I have described, is 



62 S. O. S. 

prepared. Division B deals with Troop Movements 
(not strategically but as a transportation matter) ; 
Billets and Billeting, Initial Equipment, Rents, Req- 
uisitions and Claims, while Division C has to do with 
Construction, Railway Transportation, the Army 
Transport Service, Labour and Priority of Shipment 
in France. Typical of the foresight of G4 is Divi- 
sion D, which is "Plans for Future Expansion and 
Development." 

G4 does not physically carry out any of these many 
activities, but its task is to co-ordinate all of them; 
to see that they do not clash; to reconcile deficit with 
surplus; in short to keep the wheels turning day and 
night. If Construction is to be minimised it is G4 
that finds storage areas; if freight cars are short it 
digs them up somewhere; if evacuation of tonnage 
in ports is behind Receipts it finds labour battalions 
to speed up the work. It is both Provider and Accel- 
erator — a sort of glorified and many-sided Policeman 
to whom the American Army abroad tells its troubles. 

Following the ways of the American business cor- 
poration, G4 has its Suggestion Box in the shape of 
a Suggestion Officer who is constantly in the field. 
He travels from Section to Section, investigating 
work and recommending plans for betterments, la- 
bour-saving or expansion. If he sees that switching 
facilities in a storage yard are handicapped he sug- 
gests additional engines; if he finds that working 
units can be consolidated he says so. All these sug- 
gestions are discussed in a meeting of G4 and if found 
feasible are at once put into effect. 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 63 

At the head of the pyramid of G4 organisation 
sits the eagle-eyed and dynamic Colonel H. C. 
Smither, with a mind like a steel trap and an instinct 
for order that is almost uncanny. At his right hand 
is his no less energetic and big-visioned colleague, 
Colonel J. H. Poole, who went from the regular army 
into commerce, got all the benefit of Big Business and 
is back on the military job again. He is the Deputy 
Assistant Chief of Staff. Under their combined di- 
rection the remarkable Daily Supply State and the 
Daily Summary are prepared. These men, like the 
late E. H. Harriman, live a life that is geared up to 
the telephone and telegraph. There is not an hour 
of the twenty-four that the lights are not burning 
in the offices of G4 of the Services of Supply. 

Problems of significant policy as affecting the 
whole Expeditionary Force are of course referred 
by Tours to the G4 of G. H. Q., which wisely allows 
its opposite number in the S. O. S. every latitude. 
The senior G4 at G. H. Q., however, is more actively 
concerned with the co-ordination of the supplies and 
the activities of the armies in the field who are so 
near at hand. 

Where does Washington figure in this self-con- 
tained Service of Supply which links port with trench? 
It pays the bills and acts as Purchasing and For- 
warding Agent. The cables bring the A. E. F. needs 
to a desk in the State, War and Navy Building, 
where Major General George W. Goethals sits as 
Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of Purchase, Stor- 
age and Traffic — a task infinitely bigger than what 



64 S. O. S. 

confronted him at Panama. From that desk in turn 
radiates the process of Production and Transporta- 
tion that fills the orders and sees that the goods go 
steaming to France. It involves the Control of Raw 
Materials, the establishment of Supply Zones and 
Warehouses in the United States ; the scouring of the 
whole world of output and shipping — all to the end 
that our fighting man abroad is fed and equipped. 
And he gets what he wants. 

We have followed supplies from contract to the 
borders of consumption; to that far-away domain 
where the genius of American organisation, now to 
be revealed, is fit comrade to the valour it sustains. 
We atoned for delay with thoroughness; we met that 
one-time rebuke with kindling performance. 



Ill — Army Tracks and Traffic 



BILL BROWN, who once drove a Santa Fe 
"Mogul" across the Kansas Prairies, hitched 
up his grimy khaki overalls and looked out of 
the cab of his monster consolidation locomotive 
marked "U. S. A.," which had left its Philadelphia 
maker less than a month before and which now 
panted alongside a quay at St. Nazaire in France. 
A scene of incessant action unfolded before him. In 
the lock basin was a forest of funnels and masts of 
American ships whose gay camouflage gleamed in the 
sunlight. From one of them a ninety-ton naval gun 
swung ashore as easily as a bale of hay; from an- 
other, five-ton motor trucks were lowered as lightly. 
Cranes creaked ; the plantation melodies of the Sunny 
South, sung by negro stevedores, mingled with the 
song of Chinese coolies who formed a continuous 
line of cargo carriers from deck to dock. 

In the yards nearby dozens of huge American en- 
gines, hauling endless chains of American cars, 
loaded with American supplies, snorted off to Amer- 
ican depots, often on American tracks sentinelled by 
American poles down which flashed American mes- 
sages sent and received by American men and women. 
Likewise for miles up and down the winding inland 

65 



66 S. O. S. 

waterways American tugs, pulling American boats, 
chugged along bearing their burden of American 
freight and responsibility. Day and night and with 
an effort as ceaseless as the tide of tonnage that 
beats on those stricken shores of France, is the move- 
ment of American freight and transport over there. 

What was happening in the port that made Bill 
Brown blink his eye and breathe a little faster was 
happening in more than half a dozen ports along 
that same French coast with varying degrees of va- 
riety and volume but always with the same unending 
action. Again we are confronted by a miracle of 
expansion. In January of 19 18 we were unload- 
ing 162,000 tons a month; in July this had grown 
to 694,000 tons. As late as March we thought that 
landing 60,000 troops in France was a big thirty 
days' record, yet in July exactly 301,000 stepped 
ashore. Men and material were handled, supplied 
and, what was equally important, transported to their 
proper destination. 

It is all made possible by the Empire of Transporta- 
tion whose teeming docks, tracks and traffic consti- 
tute one of the marvels of our overseas effort. Over 
it is laid the strong hand of compact organisation; 
galvanising it is an energy typically American in 
spirit and execution. At the throttle is an all-star 
cast of famous railroad and steamship officials whose 
united salaries in times of peace would almost float 
a big city's allotment of a Liberty Loan. Yet they 
toil in France for a Major's or a Colonel's pay. 

In the preceding chapters I tried to describe the 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 67 

general scope and structure of the Services of Sup- 
ply which feed and equip the fighting man. It showed 
the whole close-knit system that binds the World of 
Output to the Domain of Consumption. We are now 
up to the all essential intermediary process of Distri- 
bution. Before that avalanche of supplies can move 
from sea to gun and stomach there must be a system 
of adequate transport. We will now journey along 
its rails and canals for the second phase of the amaz- 
ing institution that American enterprise has set up 
in a foreign land and which furnishes the arteries of 
the United States of Supply abroad. 

Here, as with every other American activity in 
France, we had to build literally from the ground up. 
As soon as we went to war it became evident that 
the success of our armies overseas would depend 
upon the manner in which they were moved and sup- 
plied. Hence Transportation loomed up at the start 
as a vital factor. The difficulties that lay in its way 
were many. After three years of war the wear and 
tear on the railway facilities of France, and without 
adequate renewal, were terrific. Forty per cent of 
its leading road — Le Nord — was in the hands of the 
enemy. Every ocean gate-way of any consequence 
was in continuous use. The six largest Channel ports 
were occupied wholly or in part by the British, and 
therefore could not stand the strain of added Amer- 
ican tonnage. Besides, if we were to do our full 
job abroad we had to have our own ports. To move 
our armies and the necessary quantity of subsistence 
and equipment for their upkeep engines, cars, ter- 



68 S. O. S. 

minals — a whole railway system — had to be reared. 
All this required organisation, labour and the where- 
withal to build and operate. 

Almost with our declaration of war we realised 
this enormous transport responsibility. It was an 
expert job and had to be blocked out by experts. 
Before General Pershing and his Staff set out on 
their historic journey to France to plant the Amer- 
ican flag on the soil of freedom a Railway Commis- 
sion, named by the Secretary of War with the aid of 
Mr. S. M. Felton, sailed from New York to investi- 
gate dock and traffic conditions and recommend a 
plan for the American system. The senior member 
was 'Major William Barclay Parsons, an eminent 
engineer who had constructed the first subways in 
New York. The other members were: W. J. Wil- 
gus, who had been Vice-President of the New York 
Central, who had, among other things, laid the plans 
for the electrification of that system and who had 
been commissioned a Major in the Reserve Corps; 
Captain A. B. Barber, of the Engineer Corps, United 
States Army ; W. A. Garrett, who had had wide expe- 
rience as a transportation official; and F. de St. 
Phalle, a motive power and rolling stock expert who 
was an officer of a great locomotive works in Phila- 
delphia. They represented a combined experience 
that was an immense asset in their ramified investiga- 
tions, which began at the War Office in London and 
practically covered every line of communication used 
by the Allied armies in France. The recommenda- 
tions of this Commission, and more especially the de- 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 69 

tails suggested by Major, now Colonel Wilgus, 
formed the basis of the whole immense and far-flung 
structure through which the life-blood of our armies 
in France rushes to-day. 

That Commission found the available French ports 
and their docks already overburdened with tonnage 
and most of them with inadequate and obsolete equip- 
ment. The four great strategic railways of France, 
running from the North to the South, were carrying 
nearly all the traffic that the rails could bear. Even 
the canals were blocked. France's man-power was 
nearing depletion, the available sources of supplies 
well-nigh exhausted. It all meant that America would 
not only have to construct but also bring her labour 
and material from home. 

One of the first acts of the Commission therefore 
was to cable for Engineers. Thus it came about that 
in the vanguard of the millioned fighting host that 
later crossed the sea came those gallant Engineer regi- 
ments who have recorded in France an epic of achieve- 
ment that must stand out as one of the brilliant per- 
formances of the whole American Expeditionary 
Force. 

Nine Engineer regiments were sent. Five were for 
Railway Construction; three for Railway Operation; 
while the third was a Shop regiment. They were re- 
cruited from railway cab, switch, round house and 
shop. Every man was a volunteer. Some of the 
units went straight to France; others by way of 
England. 

Five of the regiments marched through London on 



yo S. O. S. 

that historic August day of 19 17 when Britain got 
her initial view of our men in khaki and when for 
the first time an alien army, under its arms and flags, 
paraded the British capital. Whitehall, Regent Street, 
Pall Mall, Piccadilly — indeed all the heart of London 
— were aflutter with American flags and noisy with 
a deafening crash of cheers. I saw those five regi- 
ments march past King George as he stood at salute 
in front of Buckingham Palace — an unforgettable 
spectacle in a war that has given me some memor- 
able pictures. As those stalwarts swung along a Brit- 
ish Major General who stood by my side, said to 
me: 

"Those regulars of yours march well." 

"They are not regulars," I replied. "Six weeks 
ago they were running locomotives, building tracks, 
or operating lathes in the United States." 

"Extraordinary," was his response. 

That parade through London was the last spec- 
tacular appearance that the American Engineers 
made. Henceforth from battlefield to dock they were 
to toil as no labourers have ever toiled before. Even 
their departure from England had its dramatic touch 
— a suggestion of that famous episode "in Belgium's 
capital" before Waterloo as told by Byron in "Childe 
Harold." In London was Charles G. Dawes, former 
Comptroller of the Currency and now Purchasing 
Agent of the A. E. F. in France. He had left his 
bank in Chicago to become a Lieutenant Colonel — 
he is now a Brigadier — in one of the Engineer regi- 
ments. He gave some of his fellow officers a dinner 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 71 

at the Carlton Hotel which was to be followed by a 
theatre party. Part of this regiment had been as- 
signed to the British Army in France. As the Amer- 
icans sat at dinner a hurry-up call came from the 
War Office to depart for the front early next morn- 
ing. ^All right," was the response. "We will be 
ready." The port from which they were to embark 
was a three-hour journey by rail from London. Colo- 
nel Dawes chartered a fleet of taxi cabs and saw his 
social programme through. The next morning these 
officers, having journeyed from midnight to dawn 
by motor, were on hand to leave with their men. 

Within a week I saw some of them laying track 
under fire up the Somme. It was a group of these 
Engineers who, in that first great battle before Cam- 
brai when a British Army was well-nigh overwhelmed 
by numbers last year, threw away picks and shovels, 
grabbed guns and leaped to action. It was another 
company of the same unit who, when the fate of 
Amiens trembled in the balance last spring, did the 
same heroic trick and became part of Brigadier Gen- 
eral Carey's famous "scratch" army that saved that 
day so full of other disaster to the Allied cause. 
Such is the spirit of the American Engineers who 
built the foundation and much of the structure of our 
transportation system in France; the type of organ- 
isation a detachment of which laid nearly three miles 
of narrow gauge railroad in seven hours while two 
companies built two warehouses containing 40,000 
square feet in eight hours and a half! 

Go to any one of the ports that we use in France, 



72 S. O. S. 

and you will see the results of their labours which 
began with bare hands and improvised tools. For 
the sake of illustration I will use two major ports. 
The first — Base Section Number One (St. Nazaire) 
— is that historic one-time fishing town which will 
always be bound to the United States by sentimental 
ties and where the first American Expeditionary 
Force set foot on French soil. In August, 191 7, the 
whole dock and unloading facilities were not only 
hopelessly inadequate for our needs but the pros- 
pect of increasing them was equally disheartening. 
Although there were two large lock basins the an- 
chorage outside was inadequate, while the discharg- 
ing facilities were lamentably poor. Only six ships 
of 10,000 tons each could be discharged simultane- 
ously. The dock buildings were old and rat-ridden; 
there were a few rusty cranes; the beds of the rail- 
road tracks alongside had bogged in the wet ground. 
We had no barges for lightering. When our first 
locomotives arrived in a deep-draught ship we had 
to use an ocean-going steamer for a lighter; transfer 
the engines to her deck and then bring them into 
one of the basins in this crude and cumbersome way. 
Such were the handicaps under which we laboured 
for months. 

But those Engineers got busy and they made the 
miracle happen. At the outset a discharge of 2,000 
tons a day was considered an immense performance 
at this port; in October that same port discharged 
exactly 12,000 tons. We had not only rebuilt those 
tottering warehouses but in this port and in the great 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 73 

Base Supply Depot at Montoir, four miles away, we 
had constructed fifty great warehouses that comprise 
a City of Supply. We have linked those docks and 
warehouses with more than a hundred miles of tracks 
and spurs — some of them on concrete road-bed. The 
project has a trackage equal to that of Altoona, which 
is a nerve-centre of the Pennsylvania system with two 
hundred and fifty miles of rails. We have increased 
the basin facilities until to-day there are berths for 
twenty-one ships of big tonnage. Fourteen vessels 
can discharge at the same time. 

The A. E. F. in France, with the Pershing fore- 
sight that made our whole achievement possible, al- 
ways looks ahead, and there is now in course of con- 
struction an American pier nearly 4,000 feet long, 
built on American piles, that eventually will accom- 
modate sixteen vessels. The way I saw this pier 
driven far out into the river day after day with 
amazing rapidity made the French sit up. Accus- 
tomed to putting down massive concrete foundations, 
they stood speechless at the spectacle of American 
piles pounded in at the rate of two hundred a day. 
We drove twelve to every one that the French could 
put down. Not content with working these wonders 
on quay and road-bed, our Engineers have installed 
a complete water supply for the town, which meant 
the construction of complete waterworks and a pump- 
ing station with a capacity of 6,000,000 gallons a 
day. A 500,000-gallon reservoir was simply one fea- 
ture of the project. 

You are not surprised when I tell you that two 



74 S. O. S. 

men largely responsible for the consummation of 
this work are Lieutenant Colonel William G. Atwood, 
who in civil life drove the Alaska Central through 
the snows and rigors of the frozen North, and Major 
C. S. Coe, the wizard who built the famous viaduct 
of the Florida East Coast Railway out across the 
sea-sprayed reefs where experts had said no man 
could build. The Commanding Officer of this En- 
gineer regiment, I might add, was Colonel John S. 
Sewell, who is now in command of the whole Base 
Section upon which his men have left such an endur- 
ing mark. 

All this was not done without labour. The four 
hundred coloured stevedores, yanked from sunny cot- 
ton plantation to the bitter winter coast of France, 
were the nucleus of the labour battalions now operat- 
ing in this Base Section which number 7,600. With 
the willing, cheerful, and uncomplaining toil of these 
black heroes in khaki many of our wonders have been 
achieved. It was one of these Southern darkies who 
contributed a classic story of the war. When Gen- 
eral Pershing visited this port he made a speech to 
the stevedores complimenting them on their splendid 
work. He concluded by saying that while he realised 
that every one of them wanted to fight some one had 
to stay behind and do their work. He added, how- 
ever, that the men with the best records would have 
a chance to go "over the top." This phrase caused 
much discussion among the negroes, some of whom 
had never heard it. Every one had his own defini- 
tion. Finally one of them rose up and said: 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 75 

"Well de 'top' is a place where you go over, and 
when you goes you say, 'Good mawnin', Jesus/ Dat's 
all." 

No less remarkable are the engineering results 
achieved in Base Section Number Two (Bordeaux), 
where in many respects a really stupendous construc- 
tion effort has been recorded. This port serves one 
of the largest cities in France and is on a famous 
river. Here, so far as docks are concerned, we have 
registered two distinct achievements. When we en- 
tered the war there were berths for seven ships at 
the so-called French Docks. If two ships could be 
discharged a week it was considered a big job. Again 
we faced a well-nigh overwhelming problem of in- 
adequate facilities. On the quays were a few sheds 
and switchman's shanties; the trackage was slight. 
Yet at those French Docks to-day, thanks to our 
dredging and construction, seven ships can discharge 
at the same time into warehouses big as city blocks 
or to cars that bustle up and down many miles of 
newly laid rails. 

But this performance was as child's-play along- 
side the really amazing feat that has been performed 
with the building of what will always be known as 
the American Docks. Those first seven berths were 
hopelessly insufficient for our needs, so the Amer- 
ican Engineers set in to construct a whole new system 
of piers and berths along the river and extending 
north. It involved more than 4,000 linear feet of 
wharfage. Never in the history of similar construc- 
tion have just such obstacles beset builders as did 



76 S. O. S. 

those myriad difficulties hedge in those gallant men 
in khaki. To begin with, the land was swampy and 
low, filled in with silt, mud, garbage and the decom- 
posed refuse of a camp of Anamites, the Indo-Chi- 
nese coolies who are employed as labourers by the 
French, British and American armies in thousands. 
Hip-deep in this frightful filth our men toiled all 
through the bitter winter of 191 7- 191 8. 

The French said that it would take three years at 
least, possibly five, to build these wharves. It took 
those Americans less than eight months, and this 
meant the rearing of nearly a mile of docks, washed 
by the highest tide in France ; the erection of concrete 
platforms with four lines of tracks; eight immense 
warehouses; the installation of ten electric five- and 
ten-ton cranes which straddle these tracks and lift 
huge parcels ranging from bundles of cases of canned 
goods to whole motor trucks direct from ship to car. 
Nearly 7,000,000 cubic feet of lumber, most of it 
brought from the United States, were used in this 
enterprise. That sea of filth and swamp and garbage 
is now a whirlpool of action — a miniature Duluth — 
that rings with the riot of a mighty tonnage handled 
without delay. Where once two ships were unloaded 
in a week fourteen American vessels — a thrilling 
sight as they stretch out in unbroken line, a re- 
buke to German submarine perils — are now dis- 
charged at the same time. A ceaseless stream of sup- 
plies flows from their hatches. 

I have only presented one side of the construction 
picture at this port. Nine miles away at St. Sulpice 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC yy 

and where a year ago stretched hundreds of acres of 
farm and vineyard, has risen what may well be called 
"The City that Grew Over-Night." Here has arisen 
another one of our enormous Base Supply Depots 
(you will read more of them in the next chapter) 
with a million and a half feet of covered storage 
space and three million feet of open storage in use. 
Linking this community with port is another system 
of tracks and switches — that whole net- work of rail- 
way receiving, classification and departure yards that 
are such a necessary part of our whole supply sys- 
tem. Once more you have the marvel of labour 
expansion, for the forty original stevedores of last 
autumn have grown into the army of five thousand 
that toils night and day. At first these labour bat- 
talions slept in tents, in the open air, anywhere they 
could lay their heads. Their spirit of sacrifice is only 
equalled by that kindred spirit of self-effacement of 
this regiment of Engineers (which includes hundreds 
of college men working with axe and spade) which 
went to France to build railways and which has done 
everything from installing plumbing fixtures, shower 
baths and bakery ovens in camps to building docks, 
dams, fire stations and hospitals. This unit, and the 
work it has done is merely typical of what all the 
Engineer organisations have done, was originally in 
command of Colonel J. B. Cavanaugh; who left that 
battleground of pick and pile to become head of the 
no less important, if less physically exacting, Gi at 
the Headquarters of the S. O. S. 

In this necessarily brief and bird's-eye view of what 



78 S. O. S. 

we have done in these two ports you get an idea of 
what has been going on in various ways at the others 
that we use. Everywhere we have dug and dredged; 
laid down tracks; built warehouses; set up machinery; 
all to the end that ships could be berthed and their 
cargo unloaded. 

But this was just the initial phase of the larger 
traffic task. The men and freight had to be evac- 
uated from the ports and sent to depot, camp, project 
and the front. We had to have a transportation 
system all our own and, once launched, it followed 
with a rapidity that almost rivalled the growth of the 
seaboard facilities. Summed up here is what has 
happened : 

On July ist, 19 1 7, it did not exist. Twelve months 
later saw it complete in every working department 
and operating a system of railways larger than any 
important group in the United States, It handles 
tens of thousands of tons of supplies at many ports; 
owns hundreds of locomotives and thousands of cars 
all erected in France; repairs worn-out French, Bel- 
gian and its own equipment in enormous shops; has 
a personnel of over 1,300 officers and 40,000 men and 
conducts a canal system which vies with that of Hol- 
land. Starting with operations at a single port it is 
in full swing from the Channel to the Mediterranean. 
From a French train in charge of an American officer 
our supply-carrying scope has grown to an all-Amer- 
ican train — crew, equipment, freight, everything 
Yankee except the rails — which runs from the sea 
to the borderland of fighting, a distance of 482 miles. 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 79 

The complete operation of a French railway for both 
civil and military traffic by Americans is among the 
near possibilities of a war that has made the impos- 
sible possible. 

Our whole transportation scheme in France was 
started right, because that original Railway Commis- 
sion — wise in its foresight — realised that our railway 
structure overseas must be dominated by seasoned 
railroad men. British experience justified this judg- 
ment. It was not until that Wizard of Traffic and 
Master-Doer in War, Sir Eric Geddes, had been 
taken from his desk as General Manager of the North 
Eastern Railway in England and ultimately made 
Director General of Transportation of the British 
Expeditionary Force that the light railways began 
to follow the trail of the Tommy and the whole war 
transportation proposition bristled with results. We 
therefore escaped the costly mistake of first entrust- 
ing our railways to soldiers without practical expe- 
rience. 

The beginning of our Transportation Department 
dates from July, 191 7, when three members of the 
Commission — Major Parsons, Major Wilgus and 
Captain Barber — were assigned to the Chief En- 
gineer of the A. E. F., then Colonel and now Briga- 
dier General Harry Taylor, and instructed to formu- 
late a plan. Major Parsons, however, got permis- 
sion to rejoin his regiment of Engineers; Captain 
Barber was assigned to Staff duty, so Major Wilgus 
was left on the job and with only one assistant — 
Captain L. A. Jenny, who had left the New York 



80 S. O. S. 

Central Railway to accompany General Pershing to 
France. 

Under conditions as picturesque as they were re- 
markable was the birth of this system. In a back 
room of a building at 149 Boulevard Haussmann in 
Paris, then the Engineering Headquarters of the 
A. E. F., using an army packing case for a desk and 
seated on an empty starch box (for there was prac- 
tically no office furniture) Major Wilgus, aided by 
Captain Jenny, prepared what is technically known 
as Requisition Number Six — the first definite step 
toward the creation of that far-flung steam-driven 
organisation which to-day links up all our whole 
overseas ports. This document was a Bill of Mate- 
rial, in terms of gauges, units, initial stocks and 
monthly needs, for the equipment of a complete 
transportation system from spikes to locomotives for 
an army of undetermined size and for a year in ad- 
vance. Nothing just like it had ever been done be- 
fore. It was based on pure assumption backed up 
by technical knowledge. Tribute to its accuracy is 
the astonishing fact that it remains to-day the basis 
of the whole automatic railway supply for our Ex- 
peditionary Force. Expanded it could easily meet 
the requirements of a system equal to that of the 
Pennsylvania or the New York Central. Henceforth 
— as in the case of the Automatic Food Supply — it 
was only necessary to cable for quantities of supplies 
indicated on this Master Requisition. This docu- 
ment was cabled to America — oddly enough — on 
July 14th (Bastille Day) — a date memorable alike 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 81 

in French history and also, by reason of this event, 
in the annals of railway transportation. 

Meanwhile some step had to be taken to organise 
a working Department. The Lines of Communica- 
tion (forerunner of the Services of Supply) had 
been established with Brigadier General R. M. 
Blatchford in command. Transportation logically 
belonged to his domain, so Major Wilgus was made 
a member of his staff as Director of Railways. Early 
in August, 19 1 7, the first personnel came out to help 
him in the shape of a few draftsmen, stenographers 
and clerks. They were the outposts of that army of 
practical railroad men now in France who left jobs 
ranging from $140 a month as a signalman to $100,- 
000 a year as President and General Manager, to do 
their bit abroad. 

From the start General Pershing was convinced 
that the head of his railway system must be a man 
of large experience in managing commercial railways 
at home. In this belief he cabled to the Secretary of 
War on July 29th suggesting that the ablest railroad 
men in the United States be sent over. After a care- 
ful canvass Mr. Baker asked W. W. Atterbury, then 
Vice-President in charge of operations of the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad, if he would go to France and 
undertake the all-important task of Director General 
of Transportation. Mr. Atterbury accepted; sailed 
at once, and arrived in Paris on August 31st. He 
found transportation plans launched under the direc- 
tion of Major Wilgus, and not only endorsed them 
but declared that he was content to return to the 



82 S. O. S. 

United States and leave the Director of Railways in. 
charge. Since Mr. Atterbury had been sent by the 
Secretary of War Major Wilgus believed that the 
arrangement should stand. When the Chief Engineer 
communicated this desire to G. H. Q., General Persh- 
ing formally appointed Mr. Atterbury Director Gen- 
eral of Transportation without military rank. Sub- 
sequently he was made a Brigadier General. The 
Commander-in-Chief asked Major Wilgus to join 
the General Staff. Mr. Atterbury, however, ex- 
pressed his need of him so strongly that he remained 
in the work that he had launched as Deputy Director 
General of Transportation. Thus two strong men, 
each with a distinguished service, joined for the gi- 
gantic service that lay ahead. 

General Atterbury brought to his post a typical 
American railroad training. Although a Yale grad- 
uate in mechanical engineering he rose from artisan 
in overalls in the Pennsylvania shops at Altoona to 
one of the supreme posts in the system. An organ- 
iser and an achiever, he at once made things happen, 
but not until he had found out what had to be done, 
how to do it, and what help was needed. His first 
action, therefore, was to take a trip over all the 
railways and ports that we were to use. 

As a result, and to declare a general working pol- 
icy, he approved a plan adopted in the early days 
which committed the American Expeditionary Force 
to running its own trains made up of American loco- 
motives and cars and manned by American crews 
under trackage rights over French railroads by sev- 




f* 




BRIGADIER GENERAL W. W. ATTERBURY 
Director General of Transportation, A. E. F. 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 83 

eral routes from the sea to the front, which meant, 
all lines considered, a distance of six hundred miles. 
This remains the scheme under which we operate. 
At the same time the Light Railways which are really 
part of the operations of the Combat Army were put 
in charge of Brigadier General W. C. Langfitt, while 
the control of Roads fell to Brigadier General J. H. 
McKinstry. 

The "D. G. of T." (as the head of Transportation is 
called for short) was now free to concentrate on the 
standard gauge steam job. His ideal was to create 
an army railway organisation just like any American 
commercial railway system, and this is precisely what 
he has done in every detail from top to bottom, includ- 
ing a Lost Baggage Division. To-day it only differs 
in all major respects from the Harriman or Hill sys- 
tems in that it does not have to solicit business and 
has no financial worries. Other anxieties, however, 
make up for this immunity from money troubles. It 
meant having a President, Vice-President, a General 
Manager with all necessary aids charged with opera- 
tion, maintenance of way and equipment; a Business 
Manager to look after fiscal matters, and a Chief 
Engineer for design and construction. 

With the approval of the "C. in C," General Atter- 
bury filled these posts with live railroad men of his 
own choosing. Now came the first appearance of an 
All-Star Cast in the Great Drama of American Rail- 
way Operation in France. J. A. McCrea, son of the 
late President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, retired 
from the General Managership of the Long Island 



84 S. O. S. 

Railway to become General Manager of the Amer- 
ican Army system abroad; C. M. Bunting left his 
desk as Comptroller of the Pennsylvania to be Busi- 
ness Manager; and H. C. Booz went from Assistant 
Chief Engineer of the same system to become En- 
gineer of Construction over there. M. C. Kennedy 
changed from the Presidency of the Cumberland 
Valley Railroad to* be Deputy Director General of 
Transportation in England, where our troop and 
freight activities were soon to be extensive. All four 
were made Colonels soon after their arrival and 
merged into the military establishment. With Gen- 
eral Atterbury, and Colonel Wilgus, who had been 
promoted, they formed the small group that evolved 
the whole system of American transportation abroad 
that has met every one of the five expansions in the 
numerical scope of our forces abroad. 

Handicap, which was synonymous with our whole 
early effort in France, at once took up its abode with 
the "D. G. of T." He faced complications, both phys- 
ical and temperamental, that tried the soul, harried the 
patience and made every test of tact, resource and 
ingenuity. We had to haul supplies at once, so the 
first trains were sent out with French cars, French 
equipment and with an American officer in each Sec- 
tion. 

To understand General Atterbury's problem, you 
must know that fundamentally our whole transporta- 
tion system in France had to be built around our sup- 
ply system. General Pershing, at that historic meet- 
ing in the Rue Constantine where the A. E. F. was 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 85 

born, had decided with his advisers that a ninety days' 
reserve of supplies must be kept in France. It is 
divided into three Sections. Forty-five days must be 
held at the Base ports ; thirty days in the Intermediate 
Section, and fifteen days in the Advance Section. 
Thus the whole fabric of traffic had to bend to this 
all-essential end, which meant the safety and success 
of our cause overseas. 

The difficulties that lay in the way of swift Amer- 
ican-like operation were many. First of all were 
those four great national strategic railways that run 
from North to South. They were laid out to expedite 
troop movements to the frontier, especially the Ger- 
man. The American front was to be in a part of 
France which, to be accessible to us, necessitated the 
crossing of these vital arteries. Our feat was to cross 
but not to impair them. Hence we had to dig under 
or build over them. So far it meant the construction 
of over 600 miles of switches, bridges, tunnels and 
cut-offs. 

This was only one obstacle. All French trains are 
switched at stations; we do this job outside the sta- 
tions. French cars are all hand-braked and coupled, 
while we use the air-brake both for coupling and stop- 
ping. The French currents of traffic, like the British, 
use the left-hand track where we use the right. French 
signals differ from our own in many respects. The 
only thing that the two systems had in common was 
the fact that red was universal signal of danger. To 
cap it all, French car control, that is keeping track of 



86 S. O. S. 

freight cars, as compared with our arrangements, was 
crude to say the least. 

In addition, our men had to buck the French lan- 
guage and French customs, which was about the hard- 
est job of all. The French railroad employe, in com- 
mon with his brother in city shop, takes two hours for 
his sacred dejeuner in the middle of the day. When 
our railroad hands came along with a dinner pail that 
was literally emptied on the run they thought we were 
savages. When we tried to get similar action out of 
the French there was almost a riot. Thus you see 
that our railway pioneers had some difficulties to face. 

General Atterbury found that the French railways 
were in a surprisingly good condition considering their 
incessant usage since the beginning of the war. What 
was even more astonishing, they were capable of stand- 
ing more traffic than was being put on them. But they 
lacked equipment. This meant that we had to have 
our own tools of traffic. Fortunately that famous 
Requisition Number Six was already at work and the 
rolling stock began to arrive. It is all knocked down 
in America for shipment and must be erected in 
France. We had to find or construct shops, and all 
this took much time and more worry. But the wheels 
were soon whirring and a phenomenal progress has 
been achieved. We have reached the point where we 
now average the erection of five no-ton locomotives 
a day. Already we have 1,000 Consolidation American 
engines in France, and we have ordered nearly 2,000 
more. In addition to these, we have acquired 240 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 87 

Belgian locomotives that were run out of King Albert's 
country when the Hun invasion began. 

No less remarkable is the car erection record. On 
September 1st, 19 18, we had over 7,000 American cars 
in France, including box, flat, gondola, tank and re- 
frigerator types. During the first fifteen days of 
August we averaged a daily erection of 70 cars and 
on one day 139 were put up and sent away on their 
own wheels. The average American freight car that 
we use in France is 30 tons capacity, while the aver- 
age French has only 10 tons. The American loco- 
motive averages no tons; the French 60. The draw- 
ing power of our locomotives startles the French, es- 
pecially when our great engines haul loads of 1,500 
tons as easily as their engines pull 100 tons. 

On top of this erection we have to build yards, 
terminals, sheds, switches, spurs, water tanks, sidings, 
ash dumps, coal pockets — the many accessories that 
go to make steam transportation possible. It has 
meant a continuous activity that touched every phase 
of transportation. 

All this needed a vast personnel both for construc- 
tion and operation. Those pioneer Engineer regi- 
ments who came over at the first call for service had 
to be supplemented by many thousands of men repre- 
senting a varied technical experience. You get some 
idea of personnel needs when I say that to operate a 
railway system for an army of one million men the 
full working transportation complement is exactly 63,- 
034 men, which includes 8 Stevedore regiments, 4 
Operating regiments, 2 Maintenance of Way regi- 



88 S. O. S. 

ments, i Maintenance of Equipment regiment and 4 
Car and Shop regiments. This personnel is organised 
in battalions by classifications, which include En- 
gineers, Conductors, Train Despatchers, Yard Clerks, 
Flagmen, Firemen, Boiler-Makers, Switchmen, Black- 
smiths and Boiler-Washers. 

Where did all the operatives come from? Here is 
a little story which will tell you how one kind of em- 
ploye was recruited. During the latter part of the 
summer of 1917 a big-boned fireman who had a regu- 
lar run out of Laramie, Wyoming, heard some men 
standing on the platform mention the need of engine 
drivers for the American Army in France. This man, 
whom we will familiarly call Roger, was one year 
over the draft age, but that did not deter him. He 
had always wanted to go to France. He also hankered 
to get into the war. Here was his opportunity. When 
Roger got back from his run he went to the nearest 
recruiting station and enlisted. In the course of a 
few weeks he got to France, where he was classified 
as engineer. When they showed him the locomotive 
that he was to drive his guffaw could have been heard 
miles away. It was one of the little Belgian engines 
about the size of the tender of the little mountain 
engine he had used in his apprenticeship. He called 
it a watch-charm! 

It did not take Roger long to master its kinks. 
The way he jerked the cars around the yards was 
both a revelation and a terror to the French. His 
fireman, who shall be known as Jerry, came from 
the Southern Pacific. He had seen some railroading 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 89 

under war-time conditions because his run had been 
in and out of El Paso during the period of our mobili- 
sation on the Mexican border. A few weeks after 
they had been doing the stunts with the toy locomotive 
in the freight yard at the French port a real American 
locomotive — the first in France — was set up. There 
was almost a knock-down and drag-out fight among 
the soldiers as to who should have this American 
engine. While the fight was going on, Roger and 
Jerry sneaked off, had an interview with the proper 
officer and then mounted the American steel monster. 
To-day they are pulling long freight trains over the 
heaviest run of the entire American railway in France. 
Both being single, they know every girl along the 
road, and there is always an affable chat with one 
of them every time they stop for water. Roger has 
sixteen French words in his vocabulary and Jerry 
twelve. But after the manner of the American sol- 
dier in France, they manage to get away with all 
necessary conversation. 

Roger and Jerry have hundreds of prototypes in 
the army of railway operatives who daily cause con- 
sternation among the French in the way they handle 
trains. One day a block signal was set against an 
American freight train at a small town in the In- 
termediate Section. Half a mile away the engineer 
of the train saw how the block was set and that he 
had to stop. He was going at full speed, making time 
that fairly took the breath away from the French 
who were congregated at the station. They got the 
idea that he had not seen the signal and was going 



90 S. O. S. 

to run through it. The result was that every native 
in sight began to wave everything he could lay hands 
on from flags to towels in a mad effort to stop the 
American train and avert what seemed to be an in- 
evitable and disastrous wreck, because a passenger 
train was in the block. As the French viewed it, a 
miracle happened. Two hundred yards away the 
American engineer started to apply his air-brakes and 
pulled up at the station with grace and ease just at 
the very spot that the French wished him to stop. 
When the Gauls got their breath they were in that 
state of ecstasy and acclaim that only Frenchmen can 
develop over an artistic performance. They are still 
talking about it. 

Roger and Jerry and all their mates who have come 
from practically every railroad in the United States 
to help win the war with throttle and switch in France 
had to study French methods. The way they grasped 
the complicated system is just another evidence of 
Yankee adaptability which is among the wonders of 
the war. Two Books of Rules were necessary. One, 
which we shall designate A, governs operations for 
the all- American trains and is all-English ; the other — 
Book B — is for our employes engaged in joint opera- 
tion with the French. The men in the main have 
to master both. 

The first contains, among other things, a reproduc- 
tion of all types of train orders, signals, block sys- 
tem rules, and a dictionary of transportation words 
and expressions ranging from engine to train regis- 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 91 

ters. It also sets forth the fact that, so far as time 
is concerned, the Continental System is used. 

Here we get to one of the toughest nuts that the 
American railroad man in France has been called upon 
to crack, because the French railway time tables use 
this Continental System — that is, 1 to 24 o'clock. 
This means that 3 o'clock in the afternoon American 
time is 15 o'clock French railway time; 11 p.m. 
American time is 23 o'clock, and so on. Thus the 
veteran engineer whose orders on the Union Pacific 
would have read : "Pass blank station at 4.30 p.m./' 
must adapt himself to a similar instruction in France 
which says: "Pass blank station at 16.30 o'clock.'* 
But like his parlez-vons-mg with the French girls, he 
again gets away with it. 

Of course Book A is the easiest to digest because 
it deals with rules familiar to all American operatives. 
Book B, however, which is printed in both English 
and French — the parallel text is on opposite pages — 
is the hard one. It sets forth the regulations in effect 
on the Est, the Etat, the P.L.M. (Paris, Lyons & 
Mediterranean) and the P.O. (Paris-Orleans). These 
are the four great French railway systems to which 
I have already referred. 

Dig into this little red Traffic Bible and you see 
at once how difficult is the job of the Yankee operator 
on these French lines. Scores of our engineers are 
running French locomotives that pull full complete 
French trains. Here is an illustration. On the Etat, 
P.O. and Est Railways, when the semaphore signal 
is located at a station where the train is required 



92 S. O. S. 

to stop, the signal may be passed to make the neces- 
sary stop. On the P.L.M. there is no exception. The 
stop must be made before passing the signal. This 
is just one example of what Roger and Jerry must 
pack into their heads in order to avoid a conflict with 
rules which in France is as bad as a criminal offence. 

So complete is our system of instruction that an 
American flagman sent back to warn a train in case 
of a wreck or unexpected delay in traffic, carries a 
complete set of cards printed in both French and Eng- 
lish, setting forth the specific message that he must 
deliver. It all shows that we are taking no chances 
on having wrecks due either to carelessness, misunder- 
standing, or lack of knowledge of the French lan- 
guage. 

The Transportation Department has schools for 
all ranks, and notably for the highly useful individual 
known as the Railway Transport Officer or the "R.T. 
O.," as he is more widely called. With the British 
he simply acts as a first-aid to passenger traffic, stamps 
railway warrants and helps troops as they pass 
through. With us, however, the R.T.O. has a dual 
capacity. He may be one of these passenger officials, 
or he may also handle a full-fledged traffic job at 
a Supply Depot or a Regulating Station. At some 
of these places as many as five hundred cars are 
handled in a single day. It is his work to* see that 
trains are properly made up and sent on to their 
destination. Hence the School of Instruction must 
include a complete course in traffic and also a good 
dose of human nature. I asked a certain high trans- 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 93 

portation officer in France what constituted the equip- 
ment of an efficient R.T.O., and he replied: 

"Twenty-five per cent French language; twenty- 
five per cent railway knowledge; twenty-five per cent 
diplomacy and twenty-five per cent common sense." 

To-day you can find an American passenger R.T.O. 
at every station of any consequence used by our 
troops all the way from the British Channel down 
beyond the Italian frontier. His freight brother is 
likewise hard at it at scores of places, often working 
twenty hours out of the twenty-four because supply 
trains must be kept moving regardless of sacrifice. 
Some of these men, like their Engineer comrades who 
toil with pick and shovel, perform heroic tasks. 

Despite the almost unending demands made on their 
time and knowledge, they are not without their sense 
of humour, as the following report made by a new 
"R.T.O." to his Chief indicates: 

"The following memo, of the first thirty hours of 
a new R. T. O. at a perfectly new station might be 
of interest. Station is Division Hdqrs. No R. T. O. 
has been here previously. The writer arrived at 6.30 
p.m., and after one look at the congested yard and 
unloading space covered with every imaginable prop- 
erty, from cottonwood logs which predominated to 
barracks bags, he decided that supper and a sleep 
were necessary before further efforts were made. 
The diary of the day follows: 6.30 Petit dejeuner; 
6.40 at yard handing out bull and cigars to the Station 
Master, who is by the way a fine old fellow; 7.00 
a.m. assigned to an office the best there was, and a 
good one ; 7.45 had two engines at work clearing yard ; 



94 S. O. S. 

8.30 paid respects to Commanding General and Chief 
of Staff and got assignment of a detail; 9.30 checked 
yard and arranged for detraining a solid train load; 
at 1. 00 p.m. arranged for billet; 1.40 p.m. train ar- 
rives, 2.20 troops all out of station and train gone, 
3.00 to 5.00 answering fool questions, 6.00 to 7.00 
supper; 8.10 Train of troops detained and led to 
camp; 11.35 Train of troops detrained; served coffee 
and 'herded' to camp; 4.20 a.m. Train of troops ditto, 
only worse. Have been asked more fool questions in 
twenty-four hours than ever before. Now I will send 
some telegrams and sleep all of two hours. It is a gay 
life." 

Still another evidence of the kind of drama that 
bobs up in transportation reports is in one, a copy 
of which lies before me as I write. It is a message 
from a train despatcher up near the front who is 
ordering a certain blank form. The reason that he 
gives is this : 

"Lieutenant Blank interrupted while giving report. 
Said bomb exploded just then. Blew in window caus- 
ing candle to set sheet on fire." 

Behind this simple statement told in bald official 
fashion was a story of sacrifice and danger that 
would never figure in public report and never know 
recognition. The way of the railroad employe, 
whether in war or peace, is the way of obscure but 
heroic devotion. 

The army of humble yard-men, engineers, switch- 
men and section hands who rushed to the railway 
colours is matched by the smaller but none the less 
patriotic group of higher officials who are part of 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 95 

the transportation fabric in France. You encounter 
them everywhere. One day I saw a buck private 
standing in line at the mid-day mess to get his tin 
of "slum gullion," as the army stew is called. My 
companion, an officer in the Railway Transportation 
Corps, pointed to him and said: "That man left a 
ten thousand dollar a year railway job to enlist as 
a private at three dollars a month. He is now my 
orderly." It is not an unusual case. 

Run the roster of our transportation officials 
abroad and you will see why I called it an All-Star 
Cast. It includes, in addition to those I have already 
mentioned, Colonel H. G. Maxfield, formerly Super- 
intendent of Motive Power of the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road; Lieutenant Colonel H. H. Adams, who was 
President of the Kansas City Terminal Railways; 
Lieutenant Colonel V. R. C. King, who was Termi- 
nal Superintendent of the Atlantic Coast Line; Lieu- 
tenant Colonel Neddleton NefT, once Division Super- 
intendent of the Pennsylvania Lines West ; Lieutenant 
Colonel H. J. Slifer, former General Manager of the 
Chicago Great Western; Major F. A. Delano, one 
of the best railroad men in the United States, and 
who left the Federal Reserve Board to join the army; 
Major F. G. Robbins, former General Superintendent 
of the Erie; Major G. T. Slade, who was Vice Presi- 
dent of the Northern Pacific; Major H. W. Hinkle, 
General Superintendent Toledo, St. Louis & Western ; 
Major E. B. Cushing, General Superintendent of the 
Southern Pacific Line; and scores of others, all con- 
tent to toil at improvised rough board tables on occa- 



96 S. O. S. 

sion instead of the mahogany desks over which they 
once presided. 

At the head of this Empire of Tracks and Traffic 
is General Atterbury with his hand at the throttle. So 
complete and co-ordinated is the organisation that 
there is laid on his desk every morning a single type- 
written sheet a little more than a foot square which 
sets forth — and the figures are up to the preceding 
midnight — the number of ships in every port that 
we use in France; the number of vessels unloaded 
the day before; the tonnage discharged; the number 
of freight cars of all types that were unloading; the 
empty cars received; the barges shipped and the ton- 
nage loaded on these barges; and a statement of 
weather conditions in every port. Attached is a brief 
resume of the number of ships not being unloaded and 
the reason why. 

This Daily Situation, as it is called, is just one 
more exhibit in the gallery of our army business ef- 
ficiency. We can now go ahead and see how it is 
made up. It means a brief inspection trip over the 
system of the Transportation Department, now one of 
the Services of Supply, which means that its Head- 
quarters are at Tours. 

In a small room on the second floor of one of these 
weather-beaten buildings is the office of the Director 
General of Transportation. On the walls are those 
familiar blue-print charts of organisation which you 
find in the room of every department head of the 
A.E.F. Likewise, there are charts showing density 
of traffic. It means that with Transportation, just 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 97 

as with Food and Mechanical Transport, everything 
is diagramed. 

The D.G. of T.'s right-hand is the Deputy Director 
of Transportation — Colonel Wilgus — who exercises a 
supervision over all routine and which thus leaves 
the head of the system free to move about. Instead 
of using a private car as an American railroad Presi- 
dent would use, General Atterbury goes about in a 
high-powered automobile, which enables him to in- 
spect construction jobs right up to the point of pick 
and shovel and know what is going on up to the 
hour. 

The work of every one of the important Heads 
of Departments is concretely charted. For the sake 
of illustration I will take the work of the General 
Manager. Under him are an Assistant General Man- 
ager, and also an Assistant General Manager in the 
Advance Section who is the link with the transporta- 
tion of the Combat armies; a General Superintendent 
of Transportation; a General Superintendent of Mo- 
tive Power; a Superintendent of Telegraph and Tele- 
phone; and an Engineer of Maintenance of Way. 
Various sub-departments include a Car Record Office, 
a Car Order Office, a Troop Movement Bureau, and 
a Lost Baggage Bureau. Under the General Superin- 
tendent of Motive Power of course come the various 
Shop Superintendents. Our whole system of rail- 
way operation in France is divided into five lines, 
known as the A, B, C, D and E lines — each one like 
the Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, for ex- 
ample, with a General Superintendent. The list of 



98 S. O. S. 

these various offices indicates the scope and the com- 
pleteness of the all-important wing of the service over 
which Colonel J. A. McCrea presides. 

The operation of his Car Record Bureau will show 
how we have revolutionised transportation methods 
in France. Up to the time of our advent French car 
control was a sad affair. The French had no organ- 
ised or consecutive tracing of freight equipment. 
Every two weeks they had a sort of checking up, but 
there was no definite plan. Whole trains have been 
lost for weeks. Our number of freight cars was 
necessarily limited; like tonnage, everybody wanted 
all the cars they could get; we had to keep them 
in constant use, and this required in turn that we had 
to know where they were all the time. It meant 
highly centralised control to prevent duplication of 
orders. Here, then, is the system : 

Every "U.S.A." car has a number which is part of 
a series. When a car is loaded at Base port or Supply 
Depot its number becomes a part of the way-bill. 
Henceforth that number is under constant scrutiny. 
At every station we have car checkers who report 
the location of empty and loaded cars each day. If 
a car is unaccounted for twenty-four hours a tracer 
is at once started. Every morning there is laid on 
the General Manager's desk a large sheet which con- 
tains, by stations, a report of cars delayed in excess 
of twenty-four hours. It not only indicates the type 
of car and its freight, if loaded, but the specific cause 
of the delay. Thus congestion can be relieved at once. 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 99 

All our cars are marked: "Return When Empty to 
Port." This injunction has helped a great deal. 

You can see the Master Car Situation on file each 
day in Colonel McCrea's office, which tells the whole 
story of why, out of 2,700 American cars handled in 
one interval, only 12 were missing on the whole 
Lines of Communication. Technically it is called 
"Report of Car Situation, Movement and Supply for 
Twenty-four Hour Period Ending Twenty-four 
O'Clock." It is a complete analysis of every car, 
empty and loaded, handled at every station on our 
system during the preceding twenty- four hours. On 
it you can see such items as the analysis of freights ; 
the physical condition of the rolling stock (which is 
a most important fact to know) ; the loading work 
done by the various departments; indeed, every con- 
ceivable detail that contributes to the upkeep and 
operation of the 7,000 freight cars that we had in 
France at the time I write. These daily records are 
sent in each day by telegraph. In the United States 
it is done by mail. 

In addition to all this every freight train is checked 
up and its record put on a card which contains the 
number of the train and the number of each car in 
it ; the French road it travels on ; the consignee ; point 
of shipment; destination; and contents. On the card 
is also a list of every important station that it must 
pass. The train is checked up as it passes each sta- 
tion and the hour of the passing is recorded. When 
the trip is finished there is a complete biography of 
the journey. This card is kept for ninety days in 



ioo S. O. S. 

order to check up any questions that may arise in 
connection with the trip. After ninety days it is 
officially "dead" and is destroyed. 

In the movement of troop trains you get a touch 
of dramatic interest. Here, and up to the zone of 
righting, the controlling factor is our old friend G4, 
which is advised by cable by the Navy Department 
of the impending arrival of the convoys. G4 then, 
and at the direction of G.H.Q., instructs the Troop 
Movement Bureau where the troops are to be shipped. 
They may go into a billeting area or to barracks 
for rest and intensive training. A so-called Landing 
Officer accompanies each troop train from port to 
destination. Only a Blotter Record is kept of the 
movement of troop trains, for no permanent records 
are necessary. 

It is not until our troops strike a French train — 
we use French cars for this transportation — that they 
realise the hardships of war. Our soldiers are car- 
ried on what the American would call a freight box 
car, labelled in France "40 hommes et 8 chevaux," 
which means "40 men and 8 horses." In trying to 
decipher this war-worn phrase many an American 
private has got his first real lesson in French. After 
he has travelled on the cars he begins to sympathise 
with the "8 chevaux." 

The completeness of organisation which marks the 
General Manager's activities is equally true in the do- 
main of the Business Manager. Colonel Bunting op- 
erates in precisely the same way he operated in his of- 
fice in the Broad Street Station in Philadelphia. He 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 101 

has to deal with Purchases and Requisitions; Con- 
tracts, Claims and Settlements; Statistics and Ac- 
counts, and a Record of Material. Colonel Booz, 
whose services were needed at home, has been suc- 
ceeded as Chief Engineer by Lieutenant Colonel H. 
M. Waite. When I last saw him he was City Manager 
of Dayton, Ohio, and the first man to hold such a 
post in the United States. He had previously had 
a varied railway engineering experience. It was one 
of the many contrasts that I have encountered in this 
war to find him bulwarked by blue-prints in a little 
office in the Transportation Office at Tours. He pre- 
pares the plans and specifications for all transporta- 
tion design and construction. The plans, with a list 
of material needed, are turned over to the General 
Staff for approval and then delivered to the Director 
of Construction of the Services of Supply for exe- 
cution. The material is ordered through the Chief 
Engineer. The order goes to Mr. S. M. Felton, who 
is the Director General of Military Railways in the 
United States, and who, with his technical staff, be- 
comes the Purchasing Agent of the transportation 
system abroad. 

The whole Transportation Department moves like 
clock-work. Every service has a staff meeting twice 
a week which is attended by the Heads of Depart- 
ment. The list of subjects discussed at a typical 
staff meeting of the Engineers' Department included 
the following: Coal requirements; Lumber Dock at 
Bordeaux ; Organisation to have charge of new cranes ; 
General repair shop; Regulating stations; Additional 



102 S. 0. S. 

berths at Marseilles; Maintenance of Way material; 
Additional tracks at Montoir yards; Car movements; 
Plans for opening port at Cette; Facilities required at 
ports; Tugs from the United States; Development of 
yards at St. Sulpice; Return of steel rails to French. 
Everything is threshed out ; there is no duplication. It 
all makes for team-work. 

Search through the whole Transportation Depart- 
ment and you find every detail that goes to make up 
a well-operated system. The ''Safety First" rules are 
typical. They grew out of the many fatal accidents 
to our soldiers through carelessness on trains. One 
hundred and twenty-seven American soldiers have 
been killed while riding on the tops and sides of rail- 
way cars. Hence you find all cars used by our troops 
placarded with as picturesque a set of warnings as 
was ever handed out for the safeguarding of human 
beings. 

One of them reads like this: 

"Your head may be hard, but not as hard as bridges 
and tunnel arches. Only six inches clearance between 
tops and sides of cars and tunnel arches and bridges. 
Don't ride on tops or sides of cars. The railway 
company will hold you responsible for damages to 
bridges and tunnels and signal towers. They are not 
insured. Keep your block inside." 

A second runs: "There are three kinds of fools: 
I. Fools; 2. Damned Fools; 3. Soldiers who ride on 
tops and sides of cars. If you expect to see the next 
block keep yours inside." 

A third warning says: "Huns are waiting in the 



ARMY TRACKS AND TRAFFIC 103 

trenches ahead. Speed up. You won't if you ride 
on top or stick your head outside of cars. Keep your 
ivory in." 

Still another one is: "War Risk Insurance: Keep 
inside; don't be a dead one; help to win the war." 

If you want one final evidence of the thoroughness 
of our transportation system, I have only to add the 
story of the so-called "American Special" — a near de 
luxe passenger train that runs for the exclusive use 
of American officers every night, each way, between 
the Fighting Headquarters and the Supply Headquar- 
ters. Everything on it is American except the coaches, 
and they happen to be the pick of the best first-class 
cars in France. When this train is about to start 
the passenger hears: "All Aboard" in just the same 
vernacular, dialect and all, that he hears at the Grand 
Central Station in New York, the Broad Street Sta- 
tion in Philadelphia, and the Old South Station in 
Boston. As he approaches the car negro porters, in 
khaki instead of the familiar blue uniform and brass 
buttons, separate him from his baggage just as they 
do in the States. The best thing about it is that 
these darkies are real Pullman porters. Every one 
of them has had his share of railroading back home. 
He is a never-ending source of wonder to the French 
porter, who marvels at the dexterity he shows in 
making up beds for the night. One distinctive differ- 
ence between dealing with these army porters and the 
porters in America is that the black boys on the 
"American Special" do not have their hands out for 
the customary tip which is such a necessary part of 



104 S. O. S. 

American travel. Yet their service is just as cheerful 
and just as good. The tipless porter therefore is one 
of the rare exhibits of the war! 

When the "American Special" idea was launched 
the purveying of porters became a problem. Where 
were they to come from? If there was any place, 
that place was surely the Stevedore regiments. Dis- 
creet inquiries were at once made, but the word soon 
percolated down the black and brown ranks tha,t 
men who had had experience as Pullman porters were 
wanted. The response was astounding. Nearly every 
stevedore in France claimed to have had long and 
varied training in the Pullman service. They had 
visions of warm cars and easy work. A certain top 
sergeant was known to have been a porter veteran, 
and to him was delegated the task of picking out 
the twenty men needed. He was not to be fooled. 
The net result is a porter service that is one hundred 
per cent good. There is never a trip but that these 
soldier-porters recognise some one from whom they 
have collected quarters, half-dollars and even dollars 
at the end of long runs in America. 



IV — From Ship to Shore 



ONE all-essential detail in the structure of 
Transportation remains to be explained. It is 
the Army Transport Service, commonly called 
the "A.T.S.," which forms the link between ship and 
train or barge. Ask the average American soldier in 
France what the A.T.S. does and he will say: "They 
unload the ships. " Yet no unit over there performs 
a task more significant or effective than this sleep- 
less, tireless, eternally vigilant organisation which de- 
livers man, beast and material to the steam and wa- 
ter carriers. It operates in every port that we use; 
on its work depends the flow of that vital American 
war factor, tonnage. Though it employs thousands 
of men and ranges in its activities from the Welsh 
Coast down to the shores of the Mediterranean, it 
is so efficiently co-ordinated that a man can sit at a 
desk at Tours and know every hour of the day and 
night just what is being done. Once more you have 
the spectacle of an almost uncanny centralised control. 
The man at that desk, white of hair, and with a 
soft Southern drawl, is Lieutenant Colonel H. B. 
Moore, head of the A.T.S. His job really began back 
in May, 191 7, when he was summoned from his steam- 
ship office down at Galveston to organise the transport 
unloading of the first Expeditionary Force. He has 

105 



io6 S. O. S. 

been on the job ever since. He has seen that infant 
organisation of four hundred negro stevedores and 
twenty foremen, known as the Transport Battalion, 
expand into the army of labourers that he now com- 
mands. This work was originally part of the Quarter- 
master Corps, but was transferred to its logical do- 
main, which is Transportation. 

When our supplies began to pile into France the 
word went forth from Headquarters: "Keep the 
docks clear." Congested docks not only meant an 
interrupted flow of supplies all the way up to the 
front, but what was equally important, delay in the 
"turn around" of ships, and Ships in this war are 
Life. Hence the job of the A.T.S. is to unload ships 
as swiftly as possible and keep the docks ever ready 
to take on the unending stream of stuff that flows 
from America into France. How is it done? 

As soon as a ship sails from the United States 
the Navy Department notifies the A.T.S. When that 
ship is in Mid- Atlantic it sends a further advice stating 
the draught and size of the vessel and the cargo 
in detail. If it is a transport it sends the number 
of troops and their classification. This information 
now forms the basis of operations. The A.T.S. must 
adapt the ship to one of the fourteen destinations 
that we have in Europe. This assignment is gov- 
erned in turn by the rail transport out of the port; 
whether that port is congested or free ; by the draught 
and size of the ship; the class of cargo (if it is ex- 
plosive it must go to an isolated place) ; and also the 
special type of cargo. If the ship is carrying loco- 



FROM SHIP TO SHORE 107 

motives it must go to a port which has monster cranes. 
In the case of a troopship, the final destination of the 
soldiers often helps to determine the port. Thus, 
before the ship reaches France, the A.T.S. has as- 
signed it to a port best equipped to handle its freight. 
By the time it is berthed the exact number of steve- 
dores, machinery, and trucks are ready to empty its 
deck and burrow into its hold. Now you see why 
there is no delay and why we have been able to handle 
50,000 tons a day. 

An adequate Intelligence System is a vital factor. 
Between 12 and 2 o'clock every day Colonel Moore 
gets a long-distance telephone call from the A.T.S. 
Superintendent at every one of the eleven ports we 
used in France, and they range from Belgium to Italy. 
This report is a compact summary of weather and 
dock conditions. Weather is of course an all-import- 
ant matter. If there are any usual events like acci- 
dents or wrecks they are all reported. Hence the 
Chief of the Army Transport Service is not only in 
constant touch with the situation, but he can con- 
stantly inform the whole A. E. F. about many things 
they want to know. If the Air Service, for example, 
calls up and asks: "When can we have some aero- 
planes ?" all that the officer at A. T. S. Headquarters 
has to do is to look up a sheet recording advices of 
incoming ships and he can at once say: "Sierra will 
arrive at Bordeaux to-morrow morning with a thou- 
sand tons of aeroplanes set up." 

If you want to know just how the A. T. S. works, 
come with me on a little trip to Base Section Number 



108 S. O. S. 

One. Here you will find the Superintendent of the 
A.T.S. installed in an office at the dock, where he 
can see the ships that he must work, hear the creak 
of crane and the rattle of truck. In this particular 
case the Superintendent is Lieutenant Colonel F. W. 
Green, short, stocky, alert, and a dynamo of energy. 
He left the General Managership of the Louisiana and 
Arkansas Railway to do his share in France. He runs 
that port just as easily as he once operated 1,300 
miles of railway back home. In his pocket is a loose- 
leaf memorandum book on which is typed the name, 
length, draught, the heaviest package aboard and the 
itemised cargo of every ship that he must unload. 
He has gotten these facts by wire from the Director 
of the A.T.S. Part of his task, therefore, is to 
arrange for a suitable berth for the ship. He must 
have a crane or derrick for that heaviest package 
if it is an engine or a steel girder. 

On a large black-board before him is a diagram 
of the lock basins. Each berth has a number. Along- 
side each number is written in chalk the name of 
the ship unloading there. Thus he can see at a 
glance just what is going on in his bailiwick. As 
soon as the ship is unloaded its name is wiped out 
and another is written in. 

In addition there is a black-board in the office of 
the Assistant Superintendent, which is a sort of work- 
ing register. This deals with the concrete details of 
unloading. It contains the number of the berth, the 
name of the ship alongside, the unloading officer in 
charge, the number of hatches working, the number 



FROM SHIP TO SHORE 



109 



of labour gangs on these hatches — in short, the whole 
daily programme. 

The labour battalions, that is, the stevedores, are 
divided into gangs. There is one for each hatch, with 
a sergeant in charge on deck, while a corporal looks 
after the men working in the hold. There are three 
labour shifts of eight hours each. To quote Colonel 
Green: "We work twenty-six hours a day, that is, 
twenty-four for unloading and two for cleaning up I" 
These, I might say, are the regulation army hours. 

A constant scrutiny is kept on these labourers. For 
every seven ships being unloaded there is a Chief 
Travelling Stevedore, who is a sort of official black 
speeder-up of his fellow workers. He goes from ship 
to ship. In order to stimulate the stevedores, they 
are given special leave after they have made a par- 
ticularly good record. Theft, breakage of packages 
due to carelessness and "soldiering" are punished 
with the rock pile or worse. A friendly rivalry is 
developed between these labour gangs which makes 
for good results. This is one reason why this par- 
ticular port unloaded 10,341 tons in one day. 

Watch the unloading of a group of American ships 
in a French port and you behold a sight that at first 
seems to be one of utter confusion, so deafening is the 
din and so incessant the movement. There is a con- 
stant procession of labourers from hold to dock; 
motor trucks, boxes, machinery and raw material ap- 
pear to pile up from nowhere. Yet it is orderly chaos. 
Every case of canned goods that comes ashore is 
checked up and becomes part of the daily record. Not 



no S. O. S. 

a pound strays or gets lost in the tumultuous shuffle. 
There is a checker on the boat and one ashore. Fre- 
quently, and notably in the case of ration components, 
the goods go direct from ship to freight car which 
stands on a siding at the dock. This saves rehandling 
in the warehouse. This process, technically called Dis- 
position, means that the cargo goes direct to consumer, 
which is the army, without storage. Where there is 
an exceptionally large consignment for one Service a 
representative of that Service is at the dock to see 
that it is sent at once to its proper destination. This 
is especially true of motor transportation and Quar- 
termaster stores. Motor trucks and cars are made 
up in trains and sent at once to the Reception Parks 
which are always near the quays. The whole rule 
of supply in France is to get the stuff from where it 
is plentiful to where it is needed and with the min- 
imum amount of labour. 

All this many-sided and unending dock effort is put 
down on paper. On what is known as the Daily 
Report of Dock and Shed Operations you can see the 
location of the work, the tonnage unloaded from the 
boat, whether it went direct to cars or to trucks and 
barges, or was left on the dock; the total tonnage 
handled in terms of troops, animals and materials; the 
number of man hours used up in handling the freight 
and the average tonnage per man per hour. Likewise, 
and in a no less comprehensive document entitled Daily 
Report of Boat Operations, you can read every night 
the complete record of what was done with every 
boat on which labour was employed. You get first 



FROM SHIP TO SHORE m 

of all the name of the boat; the port from which it 
sailed, the time of its arrival outside and the time of 
its docking, its draught, number of cargo hatches, the 
exact cargo aboard both in specific items and tonnage, 
and the whole unloading record. In addition you get 
its complete Outward Movement, the ballast employed 
and whether it took back to America any troops or 
passengers. Even the state of weather during the 
ship's stay in France is part of this remarkable 
chronicle. When you have finished reading one of 
these reports you know the complete history of that 
ship and its cargo from the time it left the port 
"Somewhere in America" until it sailed back from 
"Somewhere in France." 

But this is not all. That great mass of freight 
must be transferred to car and barge. Hence there 
is a Daily Report of Car and Barge Movement, which 
specifies the exact number of freight cars or barges 
loaded and the specific freight together with the desti- 
nation. The work of the A.T.S. so far as the actual 
tonnage is concerned ends when men and material go 
speeding inland-ward. Once outside the Port Area 
the railway or canal service authority begins. 

Apropos of this canal service let me say that here 
is a branch of Transportation that grows steadily in 
importance and usefulness. On its four hundred miles 
of water-ways we have more than 600 men afloat 
in charge of tow-boat captains who have come from 
American canals that range from the Erie to the Pan- 
ama project. Evidence of the approaching magnitude 
of the Service is the fact that fifty concrete oil-burning 



ii2 s. o. s. 

tow-boats are under construction for the A.T.S. in 
France. Fifteen ocean-going tugs crossed the Atlantic 
to join its fleet. 

Buried in the formal records of the Army Trans- 
port Service are many dramas in achievement — ro- 
mances of heroic effort that are as kindling as any 
narrative of fighting at the front. They are shot 
through with the thrill of combat with wind and rain 
and circumstance. Let me disclose two of them that 
will make every American feel just a little prouder of 
his national kinship with the men, white and black, 
who made them possible. 

One day a great fleet of troop transports — in reality 
two convoys — carrying over forty thousand men ap- 
peared outside Brest. The port had a normal de- 
barking capacity, with camp accommodation ashore, 
of thirty thousand men a month. It was in the early 
days. There were no docks; the soldiers had to be 
lightered. "Can you unload these men in ten days?" 
was the proposition put up to the Superintendent of 
the A.T.S. In exactly forty-eight hours afterwards 
every man was walking the soil of France. Colonel 
Green, the live wire now in charge at Base Section 
Number One, is the man who turned the trick. He 
did it — for one thing — by making a bridge of a flo- 
tilla of French ships in the harbour. He even com- 
mandeered tugs, barges, anything afloat that would 
carry a human being. That enormous convoy did not 
find camps and kitchens ready for them when they 
set foot in France, but they got off their ships in less 



FROM SHIP TO SHORE 113 

than one-fifth the time that they expected to land and 
they were ready to go up the line. 

Here is its twin performance. One of our ship 
problems has been the coaling of the monster Levia- 
than, once the Hamburg-American liner, the Vater- 
land, which must take aboard 4,500 tons of coal and 
2,000 tons of water every time she touches port. On 
two occasions she was hung up for forty and sixty 
days. This was a waste of precious troop carrying 
power. She was sent to Brest and the instruction to 
the A.T.S. was: "The Leviathan must be turned 
around in two weeks." 

Once more Colonel Green met the emergency, for 
in eighty-four hours after that reformed German ship 
poked her nose into port she was on her way out again 
fully fuelled and watered. In this case Yankee re- 
sourcefulness, spurred on by an indomitable energy, 
worked the miracle. Colonel Green, who had ample 
advance notice of the coming of the great vessel, 
swung specially made platforms all around her sides. 
This enabled him to work a much larger force of la- 
bour than the ordinary coaling facilities permitted. 
Then, with a keen sense of labour psychology, he 
started a rivalry between the Army and Navy gangs 
as to which could get the most coal aboard. Pitted 
against each other they performed prodigies. The 
best commentary that I can make on this astounding 
triumph of American methods is to say that this rec- 
ord beat the best record in Germany by exactly forty- 
eight hours. In other words, it took a hundred and 
thirty-two hours to coal the Vaterland in her home 



ii4 S. O. S. 

port under ideal conditions. Such achievements as 
these, and they are merely typical, are simply part of 
the day's work of the Army Transport Service. 

This World of Tracks and Traffic which pulses 
with movement must be linked with swift communi- 
cations. At this point we touch the Signal Corps 
which has a leading part in the whole vast scheme of 
our effort in France. Its telephone and telegraph 
lines not only bind up the Services of Supply but reach 
to the observation posts that look out on "No Man's 
Land." There is seldom a list of awards of the 
American Distinguished Service Cross without a cita- 
tion of some signaller who crept out under fire to 
repair a wire or who kept his telephone working un- 
der a hell of shells. 

With the Signal Corps you are face to face with 
what amounts to a large cross section of the American 
Telephone & Telegraph Company planted overseas. 
You see telegraph rooms that rattle like machine guns 
and with multiplex systems that send eight telegrams 
at one time over the same wire; you find yourself in 
complete telephone exchanges operated by nimble- 
witted American girls. Over the five-hundred mile 
length of our service we send what amounts to 90,- 
000 ordinary telegraph messages a day, which is equal 
to the commercial telegraph business done daily in a 
city the size of Philadelphia. In one place — Tours — 
we duplicate the business that Baltimore does every 
twenty-four hours. We register more than 1,800 
long distance telephone calls a day or as many as 
are put in each day between New York and Boston. 



FROM SHIP TO SHORE 115 

In addition there are 400 long distance calls a day on 
our leased wires. To do all this we use 18,000 miles 
of American strung wire. We also lease 36,000 miles 
of French wire, which makes a total of 54,000 miles 
of wire owned or controlled by the American Expe- 
ditionary Force. 

At the head of this net-work of nerves is a smooth- 
faced, grey-haired man, Brigadier General Edgar Rus- 
sel, who was in at the birth of the system in France. 
As in every other activity, Signals faced many ob- 
stacles. The European apparatus does not fully meet 
the needs of the American Engineers. The French 
telephone, as every traveller knows, is one of the pen- 
ances of modern times. Try to get a call in Paris — 
it is much worse in the provinces — and you atone 
for all your sins. We had to bring over everything 
we used but the poles and we had trouble in getting 
them. 

The American Telegraph Battalions who vie with 
the Transportation Corps in versatility and sacrifice, 
have become a familiar sight in rural France as they 
sit astride poles or dash up and down the roads in 
their emergency wagons. We have a complete sys- 
tem of pole patrol because these wires must be up 
and doing all the time. Every American pole is num- 
bered and branded "U. S. A." It gives you a friendly 
feeling to see the unending procession of them as you 
motor along the highways. 

The really fascinating detail, however (this ad- 
jective is not without its literal meaning), of the Sig- 
nal Corps is the human side. I mean of course that 



n6 S. O. S. 

gallant band of nearly two hundred American women 
who operate the switchboards and who have displayed 
a courage that has had more than one actual test. One 
night when Paris was under a rain of air bombs and 
when men rushed to safety, the American telephone 
girls on duty were asked to leave their posts and seek 
the "abri," which is the official "shelter." Just then 
a window in the room was smashed by a shell frag- 
ment, yet those hello heroines remained at the switch- 
board. "We will stay until the last man leaves," they 
said. This is the fibre of the enlisted sisters of our 
fighting men. 

They are a hand-picked crowd with as fine a sense 
of service as ever animated combat troops. For the 
original contingent the two main qualifications were 
a knowledge of French and telephone operation. That 
was when we had to use French wires. With our com- 
plete all-American system now the French requirement 
is incidental. Those pioneer operators had to be trained 
in the United States. The majority of them were col- 
lege girls, keen of mind and with an immense capacity 
for work. Go to any one of our switchboards in 
France and you can see a Wellesley graduate seated 
alongside a girl who has had to make her way from 
childhood. In this service, like the "Colonel's lady 
and Judy O'Grady," they are all patriots "under the 
skin." 

The telephone operators wear a smart blue uniform 
with a blue aviator cap. On the left sleeve is a white 
brassard indicating position. The operator's badge 
bears a telephone transmitter ; the supervisor's, a trans- 



FROM SHIP TO SHORE 117 

mitter in a wreath; the Chief Operator at a station, 
a gilt transmitter in a wreath surmounted by a static. 
All our women rank as civilian employes of the 
A.E.F. For safety and comfort there are never 
less than five girls in any one place. They are always 
in charge of a Supervisor and usually live in a Y. W. 
C. A. hotel. 

But telephone and telegraph is just one detail in the 
larger work of the Signal Corps. Although Aviation 
— once a part of it — has been made a separate service 
it has many other vital functions. Modern war has 
proved the value of the Radio. Hence wireless is an 
all-important function. It is part of the duty of the 
Signal Corps to intercept both enemy and neutral 
wireless messages. Some of the latter are as dan- 
gerous to our cause as those of the Central Powers. 
We have regular Intercept Stations for this work. 
Then, too, the Signal Corps operates the whole Car- 
rier Pigeon Service. These little white birds have 
saved the day on more than one occasion. Likewise 
the Signal Corps operates a complete Weather Serv- 
ice. Air fighting depends upon weather conditions. 
It is the duty of these prophets to make daily fore- 
casts of meteorological conditions upon which so much 
depends. Scientific inspection of all apparatus is an- 
other work. If a telephone transmitter is packed, for 
example, the service is impaired and this deficiency 
may spell defeat. All official photographs of the 
A.E.F. are taken by the Signal Corps and they are 
no inconsiderable aid to army operations. Since the 
modern army invents as well as fights it follows that 



n8 S. O. S. 

we have a completely equipped Research Service in- 
stalled in a laboratory in Paris, where already our 
scientific experts under the stress of emergency have 
improved telephony and telegraphy. Such is the as- 
tonishing function of a little-known but all-essential 
branch of the Services of Supply. 

Like Transportation, the Signals Corps has drawn 
the Stars of Communication to its ranks. In the tele- 
phone exchange at Tours one day I saw a slight grey- 
haired man in khaki and who wore the silver eagle of 
a full Colonel on his shoulders. When I met him a 
little later I found that he was Colonel John J. Carty, 
the greatest of all living telephone engineers and the 
man who, almost more than any other, made it pos- 
sible for New York to speak to San Francisco. He 
is on the job in France, which means that our tele- 
phone service is as scientifically supervised as that 
of Chicago or St. Louis. 

Thus Rails, Sails and Wires combine in the crea- 
tion of an Aid to War that represents the last word 
in efficiency and service. The mark of America is all 
over it. 



V — Feeding the Doughboys 



IN an office on the second floor of the historic bar- 
racks building at Tours which houses the Head- 
quarters of the Services of Supply of the Amer- 
ican Expeditionary Force sits a broad-shoudered, 
rangy man with keen brown eyes, firm jaw, and every 
external evidence of a distinct and dominating per- 
sonality. From his desk which faces the crossed flags 
of the Quartermaster Corps that hang over the door, 
radiates the authority that means victory or defeat for 
our overseas troops. Without him there can be no 
flaming offensive. With him all progress is possible. 
He is Major General Harry L. Rogers, Quarter- 
master General to the whole American army and Chief 
Quartermaster of the Pershing host. Through him 
your son, brother, husband or sweetheart, whether 
he is in Base port or at the battle front, never misses 
a meal, and is always shod and clothed. 

The moment you reach the Quartermaster Corps 
you invade the Master Domain of the Business of 
War. Guns can wait but hunger cannot. Upon it 
depends the vital energy of the combat force for the 
well-fed man can always fight. An army is only as 
efficient and as effective as its subsistence system, and 
it is as true to-day as it was when men hurled spears 
and shot arrows. 

119 



120 S. O. S. 

No corresponding officer in any of the Allied armies 
has so ramified a task as General Rogers. Steward- 
ship of the soldier's stomach is only one of his obliga- 
tions. You get some idea of the scope of his labours 
when I tell you that the blue-print chart of his organ- 
isation in France alone is eight feet long and has 
more than a hundred Sections, each one indicating a 
separate activity. Under his control everywhere is 
an army greater than the entire regular establishment 
of the United States when we went to war with 
Germany. He is the keeper of more than three square 
miles of warehouses in France from which flow un- 
ceasing streams of sustenance. At his direction the 
largest ice making plant under one roof in the world 
has been built. He operates farms and factories while 
his salvage ranges from the repair of a shoe to the 
restoration of a sawmill. In fuelling the fighting fur- 
nace he has expanded industry and redeemed com- 
munities at home and abroad. The figures with which 
he deals are so staggering that they need to be splashed 
on a ten-league canvas with those proverbial brushes 
of comet's hair. 

His principality is geared up to the whole Universe 
of Output. The Old World and the New alike lubri- 
cate the endless chain of army supply that must never 
break a link. In every subsequent chapter of this book 
you will encounter some contact or dependence upon 
his far-flung functions. Chief among his responsi- 
bilities, however, is Subsistence. It is with the re- 
sponse that he makes to the most incessant of all de- 
mands — the human appetite — that this narrative is 




MAJOR GENERAL HARRY L. ROGERS 
Chief Quartermaster of the S. O. S., A. E. F. 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 121 

mainly concerned. Again you have the revelation of 
a monster merchandising, driven by a titanic energy, 
harnessed to needs and wants that never cease. Once 
more you find the emergency met. 

The Quartermaster Corps, which is the prototype 
of the Army Service Corps in the British Army, was 
in at the birth of the A.E.F. Like mothers' milk 
it begins with life for it is the means preservative of 
army existence. Originally the present organisation 
was operated by three separate bodies: the Pay De- 
partment which paid the troops; the Commissary 
which dealt with food; and the Quartermaster who 
provided clothing and tentage. Long before we went 
to grips with the Kaiser, however, they were unified 
under one head — a Quartermaster General, and in one 
body which was called the Quartermaster Corps. 
Hence the Quartermaster General of the army — the 
"Q.M.G." — is like the head of a corporation com- 
posed of many merged subsidiaries. 

When General Pershing sailed for France in June, 
19 1 7, he took with him Colonel Daniel E. McCarthy, 
who was the First Chief Quartermaster of the A.E.F. 
With him went five assistants and also ten other 
Quartermaster Officers with a group of enlisted sol- 
diers and clerks. This handful of subordinate officers 
and men, many of them now risen high in the Service, 
formed the nucleus of the tens of thousands who suc- 
cour and sustain the Expedition to-day. 

Like every other Service, the "Q.M.C.," as the 
Quartermaster Corps is termed, had humble begin- 
ning. Its first offices were two rooms, twenty by 



122 S. O. S. 

twenty feet square, in that historic building in the Rue 
Constantine in Paris where our whole overseas effort 
first saw the light of day. The tiny quarters were 
flooded at the start with every conceivable kind of 
commercial offering that ranged from hand grenades 
and tennis rackets to whole bakeries and founderies. 
There was a constant influx of inventors, spies, sales- 
men, advisers, business "experts" and stranded Amer- 
icans all dripping with suggestions and ideas and 
eager to get their fingers into Uncle Sam's purse. 
This itch for easy Government money, I might add, 
still exists. It knows neither rank nor caste. 

In those early and precarious days General Persh- 
ing realised that the great bulk of his supplies would 
have to be brought from America. Thus our whole 
vast tonnage problem really began with food and it 
has remained the first and foremost consideration of 
shipping ever since. 

In July, 1 91 7, and in one of the first orders issued 
by the A.E.F. the duties of the Chief Quartermaster 
were published as: Transportation of Personnel and 
Supplies; Supply Transportation and Repairs; Cloth- 
ing; Quartermaster Equipment; Subsistence; Fuel; 
Forage ; Lights ; Quarters ; Camp Sites ; Quarters and 
Offices; Pay of Personnel and General Disbursements; 
Laundries and Baths; Remounts; Claims; Salvage; 
Workshops and Storehouses; Cemeteries; Burials; 
Graves Registration ; Labour and Quartermaster Per- 
sonnel. With the exception of Claims and Transpor- 
tation these duties remain practically the same to-day. 

Part of Colonel McCarthy's force arranged for 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 123 

the camp and subsistence of the first Expeditionary 
Force which arrived in St. Nazaire on June 26th, 
19 1 7. This force of 10,000 men brought its Quar- 
termaster complement but it had to do some pretty 
lively skirmishing and lean on the French and British 
until the Overseas Supply Service had been established. 
Meanwhile an event of far-reaching importance to 
our Supply Service happened. Down at San Antonio, 
Texas, and working as Department Quartermaster of 
the Southern Department was the then Colonel Harry 
L. Rogers, once called "The Boy Paymaster." His 
father conducted a famous military school in Mich- 
igan from which he had graduated and gone straight 
into the regular army. He had solved the biggest 
army supply problem since the Civil War because 
he successfully fed and equipped the army of 250,000 
regulars and National Guardsmen that we mobilised 
on the Mexican border. It was Rogers who kept the 
supply trains and trucks filled and moving in the trail 
of Pershing when he went after Villa and his fellow 
bandits. He little dreamed as he sweated over the 
hard-tack and canned beans that he sent day after 
day out across the dusty sagebrush and the scorching 
mesa that he would soon be feeding that same Com- 
mander at the head of hundreds of thousands of 
Americans overseas. Destiny was working in his 
direction. On June 26th the army telegraph instru- 
ment ticked out an order to him to come to France. 
In two weeks he was on the ocean; on August 13th 
he was made Chief Quartermaster of the A.E.F. 



124 S. O. S. 

Subsequently he became Quartermaster General to all 
our forces. Colonel McCarthy had to return home 
because of illness. 

It was Brigadier General Rogers (his great work 
on the border had won him promotion) who faced the 
task of organising the Quartermaster's work in 
France. To write of those early times is to begin the 
usual catalogue of difficulties and handicaps. There 
was shortage of personnel, tonnage and motor trans- 
port. Besides, no one knew just how large our over- 
seas force would be. It is interesting to reflect that 
at the outset our coal needs, for example, were con- 
sidered at 15,000 tons a month. To-day we use 
nearly ten times that much. 

Responsibilities literally buzzed around the head 
of the new Chief Quartermaster. With uncanny fore- 
sight he anticipated many emergencies. For one thing 
he saw that he would have to purchase as many sup- 
plies as possible abroad in order to save tonnage. 
Out of this vision grew the invaluable General 
Purchasing Board of which you will hear more in a 
later chapter. It was put up to the Chief Quarter- 
master, or the "C.Q.M.," as he is familiarly called, 
to locate and equip the General Headquarters of the 
A.E.F. and which were opened on September 1st, 191 7, 
at Chaumont, a little town in the North that will be for 
ever famous. Here, and almost within stone throw 
from General Pershing's office, General Rogers set up 
shop with five assistants. From this has grown his 
overseas supply army which now numbers more than 
3,000 officers and 85,000 men, all bound by a sense of 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 125 

loyalty and service which reflect the character and 
purpose of the man at the head. 

There is no space here to tell the story of the mar- 
vellous expansion of the Supply Service. The first 
Quartermaster Depot in that one-time fishing village 
where the American flag was planted in France was 
the lone outpost of the continuous bulwark of food and 
equipment that now stretches more than four hundred 
miles from the sea to the front. Whether these De- 
pots feed five hundred men or five hundred thousand 
the system is just the same. Three times a day in 
fair weather or foul, in battle lull or amid the hail 
of lead, the dough-boy literally gets the dough — and 
a great deal more. We have capitalised every expe- 
rience of the British and have added some trimmings 
in the bargain. 

To-day the office of the Chief Quartermaster at 
Tours is precisely like the office of the President and 
General Manager of the greatest Distributing Corpo- 
ration in the world. On his wall hangs that eight- 
foot super-blueprint which outlines the organisation. 
At the apex is General Rogers. Immediately under 
him is the Deputy Chief Quartermaster, Brigadier Gen- 
eral J. M. Carson, who is his understudy. Linked up 
with the Chief Quartermaster are three assistants, 
Brigadier General J. F. Madden, Colonel A. K. Bas- 
kette and Lieutenant Colonel J. P. Castleman. They 
do just what the assistants to the head of a commer- 
cial concern do. Supporting the Deputy Chief Quar- 
termaster is the Chief of the Inspection Division, 
Colonel M. J. Henry. You must understand that it is 



126 S. O. S. 

only through constant inspection that these wheels of 
supply are kept moving. In this group you have what 
would correspond to the principal executive heads of 
a huge Supply Corporation. 

Extending from this group are the myriad lines 
that link up the various Divisions. First and fore- 
most comes Supplies, which means subsistence of all 
kinds — fuel, forage, clothing, vehicles, warehousing, 
gardens (for we raise our own vegetables) and cold 
storage. The other Divisions are: Salvage; Re- 
mounts; Accounting; Finance; Personnel; Adminis- 
tration; Construction and Repair; and, final service 
in the life of the soldier — Graves Registration. With 
the exception of this last-mentioned Section you have 
the complete working units of a well-knit commer- 
cial institution that deals in food, transport, garden 
truck, and does considerable manufacturing on the 
side. The Heads of these Divisions are like the di- 
rectors of a corporation (they are a Supply Directo- 
rate) and sit in with the Chief Quartermaster and his 
Deputy at daily or called conferences which are pre- 
cisely like the sessions of the Board of Directors of 
the United States Steel Corporation or the Interna- 
tional Harvester Company. Every Division knows 
what the other is doing; each Head profits by the ex- 
perience of his colleague; their united effort spells the 
success of the extraordinary institution which fur- 
nishes the mainstay of the American Expeditionary 
Force. 

Now let us take a swift survey of the Lines of Sup- 
ply, You can see them on the huge Map of Distribu- 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 127 

tion that hangs in General Rogers' .office. Red rib- 
bons indicate the various Sections into which we 
divide France. Each one of these Sections, as I ex- 
plained in the first chapter, is a little independent Sov- 
ereign State of Supply with a Commanding General 
who corresponds to a Governor. All form what I 
call the United States of Supply abroad. The Chief 
Quartermaster has a small army in each one of these 
States. In the Base Sections, which include one or 
more ports, there is a Base Quartermaster who is 
the Ranking Subsistence Officer charged with Supply 
administration. Every Supply Depot in that Section 
has a Depot Quartermaster who sees that supplies are 
received, stored in warehouses, or reloaded on cars 
or trucks and sent up the line to other Depots or 
straight to the front. There is a continuous move- 
ment of stuff. With Supplies life is one continuous 
round of rehandling, repacking and redistribution. It 
is the uncompromising price that adequate sustenance 
of the fighting man exacts. 

If all our food and supplies could be shipped 
straight from the port of arrival to the consumer, 
which is the army, our job would be comparatively 
easy. We could mobilise it all in warehouses at once, 
two or three ports, and send it up in trains and trucks 
which would merely mean an automatic renewal of 
Base stocks. But the American Expeditionary Force 
is spread out over four hundred miles of communica- 
tion; it must feed hundreds of thousands of men split 
up in units that range from five hundred to hundreds 
of thousands. We must keep in France a ninety 



128 S. O. S. 

days' reserve of food for our whole overseas force 
and all these subsistence eggs must not be stored in 
one basket. In addition, the enemy infests the air, 
and there is always the danger of raids in some quar- 
ters. To cap all this is the incessant flood of sup- 
plies that is arriving in France at the rate of tens of 
thousands of tons a day. There must be no conges- 
tion at the ports. Hence there was devised a system 
which scatters the storage and provides for a chain 
of huge Supply Depots that begins at the Base and 
extends far up into the Advanced Section. 

The Depots at the ports are called Base Supply 
Depots where a forty- five days' supply is kept. Half 
way between sea and front are the Intermediate Sup- 
ply Depots which house a thirty days' supply, while 
those still nearer the zones of the armies are tech- 
nically known as Advanced Supply Depots built to 
hold fifteen days' rations for the overseas forces. 
Each one of these institutions is a full-fledged City 
of Supply with acres and acres of closed and open 
storage; thousands of employes, with receiving, de- 
parture and classification railway yards; with water- 
works system, fire department, police force — indeed 
every detail of a self-contained orderly and thriving 
community. If you want one stirring evidence of 
American foresight and enterprise abroad just go to 
one of these Capitals of Subsistence and you will see 
sections of New York, Chicago, Detroit and "other 
points West" all rolled into one dynamic centre of 
life and action. This chain of Supply Depots is linked 
up with hundreds of miles of railroad over which an 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 129 

almost unending procession of American Supply trains 
made up of American cars, hauled by American en- 
gines and operated by American crews, travel day and 
night. 

Before we dissect the vast body through which 
flows the life-blood of our overseas armies we must 
first find out what constitutes the life-giving suste- 
nance. In other words, what does the doughboy eat? 
Here we get to the one war subject of supreme and 
universal interest. Everybody eats; every one has 
some friend or relative in France; therefore he is con- 
cerned about his fare and welfare. The diet sheet 
of the soldier is as important as the annal of an ad- 
vance and is infinitely more regular. 

In the last three years I have eaten in the messes 
of the American, British, French, Italian, Belgian and 
Russian armies. Out of all this experience I am free 
to confess that no soldier (I cannot of course speak 
of the war-time German commissary) is better fed 
than ours. With the possible exception of the Brit- 
ish Tommy none gets such quantity and variety. I 
have had griddle cakes with syrup at an enlisted men's 
mess at a Base port, while at officers' tables in the 
field I have had apple pie, white rolls, biscuits and 
corn bread, all piping hot, that were as palatable as 
any I ever had in America and all made out of the 
regulation ration issue. You can only realise the 
miracles that a good cook can work with tinned beef 
when you try some of the many kinds of stew that 
emerge from the ordinary travelling kitchen often 
bricked up in an open field. Uncle Sam believes with 



130 S. O. S. 

von Moltke that "no army food is too expensive." As 
a matter of fact, good food is a good investment, in 
war as in peace. 

The so-called ration is the amount of food that a 
soldier eats every day. In the American army the 
various articles such as bread, meat, salt, butter and 
lard that go to make up this ration are technically 
known as the components. This ration has been scien- 
tifically worked out by the best food experts. As far 
as the A.E.F. is concerned it is based on all our pre- 
vious army experience in many climates and has also 
had the added value of the investigations of the Rock- 
efeller Institute. Thus the food that is served every 
day, rain or shine, in France is ample fuel for the 
machine that works and fights. 

As in the British army, we have different kinds of 
rations to meet certain needs. The standard ration, 
however, is the so-called Garrison Ration. The prin- 
cipal components are fresh beef, flour, beans, pota- 
toes, prunes, coffee, sugar, evaporated or condensed 
milk, vinegar, salt, pepper, cinnamon, lard, butter, 
syrup, baking powder and flavouring extract. These 
major articles are issued in given quantities for each 
man. It is up to the mess sergeant and the cook to 
do the rest. If the mess sergeant is enterprising and 
the cook resourceful these articles may be converted 
into three very satisfactory meals, including hot cakes 
and syrup at breakfast, pie at dinner and ice cream 
at night. 

These components, however, are what might be 
called the stand-bys. The Quartermaster provides a 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 131 

host of substitutes which make for an almost infinite 
variety. Instead of fresh beef the men get mutton, 
bacon, canned meat, dried, pickled or canned fish — 
mainly salmon. For beans the substitutes are rice 
and hominy; for Irish potatoes they are sweet and 
canned potatoes. Frequently as a potato substitute 
onions or an equal quantity of canned tomatoes are 
served. In the same way dried or evaporated apples 
and peaches, jam, figs, dates and raisins are used in 
place of prunes, just as pickles vary with vinegar and 
tea with coffee. 

Whenever possible fresh vegetables are a part of the 
soldier's daily diet. These are purchased from the 
French farmers in large quantities. During the past 
twelve months, however, the Chief Quartermaster has 
instituted a regular Garden service which cultivates 
thousands of acres of gardens which are in general 
charge of a Chief Garden Officer who in civil life 
was a one-time farm hand who rose to be Manager of 
a show farm up New York State. These gardens are 
operated by soldiers who have been temporarily or 
permanently disabled from fighting. They not only 
afford excellent employment for these men but save 
the army thousands of dollars. At the same time 
they contribute wholesomeness and change to the sol- 
dier's food. The only trouble that ever marred the 
fresh fruit and vegetable ration was when a negro 
stevedore from Georgia thought that a French melon 
was a faded water melon. It is tribute to the adapta- 
bility of the American soldier that these Southern 



1 32 S. O. S. 

darkies have acquired an ardent if expensive taste 
for French melons. 

The doughboy is a carnivorous animal. For him 
there are no meatless days. His fresh or frozen beef 
allowance therefore, or its equivalent in mutton, is 
twenty ounces a day, which is four ounces more than 
the allowance of the British soldier. It is the largest 
known army meat ration. 

Every month some new feature is added to the sol- 
dier's ration. Thanks to General Rogers an ounce of 
bar chocolate is now a ration component. Formerly 
the only chocolate procurable was through purchase 
at the Commissary Stores. During the past fifteen 
years the efficacy of chocolate as a fighting man's food 
has been amply demonstrated. It began in the Russo- 
Japanese War when the little brown men scientifically 
showed that it is, in many respects, the most compact 
and sustaining of all emergency rations. As most 
people know, when men eat candy they have little 
desire for liquor. The man on the water wagon nat- 
urally takes to sweets. A candy famine in France 
therefore works almost as much hardship as a short- 
age of meat. 

Another new feature is macaroni, which is not only 
nourishing but when mixed with cheese, which is still 
another new component, is most sustaining. When 
macaroni was first introduced the men said instinct- 
ively: "Do you think that we are a bunch of 'da- 
goes' ?" As soon as they found out how good it was 
they changed their tune. Now they almost cry for it. 

Still a fourth innovation in the matter of ration 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 133 

issue is an allowance of four ounces of smoking to- 
bacco with cigarette paper or an equivalent in ciga- 
rettes. This boon for the Yankee fighting man is the 
direct result of an order from the Commander-in- 
Chief, who does not himself smoke! 

The Garrison Ration is increased for the troops 
in the front line trenches from November to March, 
inclusive. The meat allowance is expanded by five 
ounces; coffee and sugar by an ounce each. The man 
under fire also gets fifty per cent increase in candles 
and matches. The French winter with its intense cold 
and incessant rain makes this increase in stomach 
stoking necessary. 

Of course bread is an ill-important item. Our men 
get the very best fresh white bread available. It is 
supplied to troops on the Lines of Communication and 
in the field with equal ease and quality. The field 
bread is in ten and twelve pound loaves and goes up 
to the troops in jute sacks forty-eight hours after it 
has left the oven. We have a string of hand-operated 
and mechanical bakeries that extends from the ports 
up to the zone of the armies and where every pound 
of the 1,700,000 pounds of bread that we consume 
every day in France is baked. One of these mechan- 
ical bakeries has a daily capacity of 800,000 pounds 
of bread ; another turns out 400,000. The empty flour 
sacks are sent up to the front and used for sand bags. 
There is an allowance of one pound of bread a day 
for each man. If he gets tired of this variety he 
can get hard bread which we produce in immense 
quantities. This hard bread is a much better variety 



i 3 4 S. O. S. 

than the famous "hard tack" which was one of the 
prize tooth and digestion destroyers in the world. It 
is excellent and when soaked in coffee is most desir- 
able. 

The components of the Garrison Ration lend them- 
selves to much manipulation. Here is a sample aver- 
age daily menu of troops on the Lines of Communica- 
tion : for breakfast there was coffee or tea, fresh white 
bread, ham and jam; for dinner, as the midday meal 
is called, there was roast-beef, potatoes, canned toma- 
toes, fresh white bread, butter and a dessert composed 
of stewed apples and raisins; at supper the men had 
beef stew, white bread and French toast and syrup. 
This is typical fare and it is served with abundant 
variation whether the doughboy is behind the lines, 
in camp or barracks: travelling on a troop train, or 
up in the trenches. With the American army larder 
there is no such phrase as "no more." Every man 
gets as much as he wants. I have seen mess tins 
brought up three times in rapid succession before the 
ravenings of a soldier's hunger were appeased. 

The so-called Field Ration is a more or less emer- 
gency or campaign ration consisting of bacon or 
canned meat, hard bread, beans, potatoes, dried fruit 
or jam, sugar, milk, salt and pepper. The Reserve 
Ration, which in some respects corresponds with the 
Iron Ration that the British Tommy carries in his 
haversack all the time in case of a breakdown in food 
transport, consists of bacon or canned meat, hard 
bread, coffee, sugar and salt. Our men must keep 
this on their persons when in the field. Still another 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 135 

Reserve Ration, which is kept in poison-gas and water- 
proof tin containers in the trenches and which is never 
touched except in case of acute need, consists of 
canned meat, prepared chocolate and a tinned essence 
of coffee which can be instantly prepared and be made 
ready for use by the addition of hot water. 

In many messes the men have special funds secured 
from the sale of garden truck, the disposition of 
kitchen refuse for salvage, of the raising of rabbits 
which can be done in the permanent camps. This 
money is used for the purchase of ice which is not a 
ration issue or other luxuries. One Motor Transport 
mess at a Base port was able to have ice cream every 
day as a result of a well-organised mess fund. Be- 
sides, all members of the A.E.F. can buy preserves, 
extra jam, candy, canned goods, cocoa and chocolate 
and various other articles not issued by the Quarter- 
master at the Sales and Commissary Stores which are 
found wherever our troops are stationed. These goods 
are sold at cost. 

Such is the food supplied to the American troops. 
But war these days is an international affair. The 
mouths that we must feed not only include those of 
the German prisoners, who get ample for their needs, 
but likewise the mouths of the Congress of Nations 
that labour for us everywhere in France. They in- 
clude Indo-Chinese coolies (the Anamites), Northern 
Chinese labourers, Italian militarised service troops, 
French, Spaniards and Greeks. For the Indo-Chi- 
nese the ration is largely rice, bread and meat gar- 
nished with garlic ; for the Northern Chinese the prin- 



136 S. O. S. 

cipal components are rice, bread and vegetables, 
mainly turnips; while the Italians, French, Spaniards 
and Greeks get bread, meat, macaroni, vegetables, cof- 
fee and a daily allowance of half a litre of red wine. 
This wine is as necessary a part of the daily food 
issue of the Latin soldier as bread or meat. 

Although we are feeding more than a million and 
a half men in France there is no cook problem. That 
ancient adage, "God sends the meat but the devil sends 
the cook," has no echo in the A.E.F. Thousands of 
trained food mechanics were caught in the various 
drafts. You can find hash-slingers from the popular 
price restaurants working side by side with real chefs 
from the swagger restaurants and hotels. At the 
army oven all men are equal. They are only judged 
by results. 

Any shortage in cooks is readily filled for, like the 
British, we have a School for Cooks. The men get a 
course of instruction in plain cookery. Then they are 
given practical tests. They must try their food on 
each other first. You may be sure that this makes 
for efficiency. The Government also issues a Manual 
for Cooks which is not only a complete and scientific 
cookbook with hundreds of recipes and menus but 
also shows with simple text and comprehensive pic- 
tures how to cut fore and hind quarters of beef and 
carcasses of pork and mutton with the least possible 
waste. There are illustrations which show cross-sec- 
tion of field ranges and camp ovens. In order to meet 
any emergency or breakdown in kitchen equipment 
there are specific directions how to make an im- 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 137 

promptu fireless cooker by placing a milk-can in an 
ordinary water container with hay or straw packed 
between. This book is as complete as any I have seen 
in the war. It is fool and waste proof. 

The average person is apt to assume that because 
the army kitchen is in the open, in temporary quar- 
ters, or on the move it is lax and unsanitary. As a 
matter of fact it is under rigid military discipline. For 
every one hundred men there is a mess sergeant who 
is the czar of his little domain. The cooks, dining 
room orderlies and the Kitchen Police — the "K.P.'s" 
— are under him. The "K.P.'s" who do the scullery 
work are recruited from the men disciplined for minor 
offences. In scrubbing floors and gathering garbage 
they have ample time to reflect on their misdeeds. 

"Cleanliness," to quote the army Order invoking 
it, "which is still our most reliable protection against 
disease," is drastically enforced. The army cooks 
are required to keep their nails trimmed and clean. 
They must scrub their hands with hot water and 
soft soap before entering the kitchen. There is a 
daily issue of white caps and aprons which are worn 
all up the line as far as the area of fighting. 

Those gallant British cooks and kitchen orderlies 
who dropped their frying pans and dishes and rushed 
to the firing line at the first battle of Ypres have noth- 
ing on their American comrades. Nearly every day 
you hear of some courageous Yankee who kept the 
pot boiling amid shot and shell. Not long ago an 
army cook, Harry C. Ricket, was awarded the Dis- 
tinguished Service Cross. His performance was so 



138 S. O. S. 

remarkable that I present the Commander-in-Chief's 
citation. When you read it you realise that there is 
not only honour but glory among cooks. Here it is: 

"He maintained his kitchen at Chateau-de-la-F6ret, 
near Villers-sur-Fere, France, on July 28-29, 19 18, 
during a bombardment so intense as to drive all other 
kitchens out of the village. When his stove had to 
be taken to the rear, he improvised a fire in the ground 
and continued his work until ordered to leave. He 
carried water from a spring which was repeatedly 
shelled when others would not approach it. Unaided, 
of his own volition, he conducted a first aid station 
for wounded and exhausted men at his kitchen. Con- 
stantly in extreme personal danger from machine gun 
fire from low flying airplanes and bombardment by 
high explosive shells, Cook Ricket devoted himself 
entirely to the needs of others and made possible the 
care of several hundred wounded, exhausted, and 
hungry men/' 

All the romance of the war is not where danger 
calls or the spotlight shines. Even so prosaic a task 
as food procurement becomes a stirring if smokeless 
drama of achievement. It discloses a series of re- 
markable performances by an equally remarkable man 
who will have a unique place in the record of the 
A.E.F. To know what he did you must first know 
who he is, for he is the embodiment of the real de- 
mocracy that constitutes our overseas force. 

Back in 1897 an immigrant boy of sixteen, Otto 
H. Goldstein by name, arrived in Chicago from his 
home in Bohemia where his father was a rabbi. When 
the war with Spain broke out he joined up as a pri- 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 139 

vate in the Second Cavalry, served in Cuba and the 
Philippines and rose to be a Top Sergeant which was 
as high as he could go. In 1905 he quit the army, 
entered the grocery department of one of the great 
mail order houses which have helped to make Chi- 
cago famous, and developed such executive ability that 
he became a Manager. A few years later he went into 
the wholesale grocery business on his own and had 
built up a considerable trade when we declared war 
on Germany. As a sidelight on his subsequent career 
let me add that he mixed considerably in politics and 
served a term in the Illinois Legislature. He at once 
offered his services to his country; was made a Re- 
serve Officer with the rank of Captain — he is now a 
Major — and began a whole new army career that was 
to be as dramatic as it was useful. 

Major Goldstein is the type of person who makes 
things happen. He was sent as student to a Com- 
missary School at a cantonment; in a week he was 
instructor. As soon as he arrived in France he was 
ordered to straighten out a tangle at a big Supply 
Depot in the Intermediate Section where there was 
difficulty in feeding fifteen thousand men. In a month 
he was supplying one hundred and fifty thousand. 

His first great opportunity now developed. Coffee 
is among the fundamental daily ration army require- 
ments. It became evident that we would need 6,000,- 
000 rations, or 280,000 pounds of the roasted and 
ground bean every day, which exceeds the output of 
any private plant or group of plants in the world. 
General Rogers wisely decided that to save tonnage 



140 s. o. s. 

and likewise meet any market emergency we must 
have our own army coffee industry. This is how 
Uncle Sam began his career as manufacturer for the 
army on a large scale abroad. 

Fortunately a large stock of green coffee was avail- 
able. There had been a remarkably good coffee crop 
in Brazil just before the European war began. Ger- 
man financiers started to get a corner on it. As a 
consequence dealers everywhere, in self-defence, 
bought up immense quantities. With the outbreak of 
war the attempted German coup failed, prices dropped, 
and the market was flooded. Happily an immense 
quantity of this coffee was in France and it fell into 
the hands of the Chief Quartermaster of the A.E.F. 

The problem was to find a man to run our coffee 
business. General Rogers had known of Major Gold- 
stein in his old regular army day. The Major had 
dealt in coffee as a wholesaler in Chicago, so the 
roasting and grinding job was put up to him. It 
was easier said than done. No coffee machinery was 
available in France so Goldstein designed roasters 
that were vastly more sanitary and efficient than the 
French machines. 

He then set about to establish a factory at a little 
town not far from Paris and where he could have 
both water and railway transport. It was impossible 
to find a suitable structure so this indomitable one- 
time sergeant said : 'Til build a factory." He leased 
an abandoned brickyard, hired several hundred dis- 
abled French soldiers who made bricks stamped 
"U. S. A.," and with them constructed a model elec- 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 141 

trically-driven roasting and grinding coffee plant. 
When I saw it one Sunday in September, 19 18, it was 
using 90,000 pounds a day. The whole process is 
mechanical from the moment the green bean is emp- 
tied from the original sack until it emerges brown, 
fragrant and powdery into the fifty-pound receptacle 
in which it goes to storage or kitchen. Nearby was 
a warehouse that contained 11,000 tons of the green 
coffee. 

The process of roasting, grinding and hauling 
which at current French rates would cost $112 a ton 
is done at the army factory for exactly $18.80. This 
coffee is delivered to the army kitchen at a cost to 
the Government of 14 cents a pound. When the 
present immense stock of green coffee is exhausted 
the new supply will come direct from Brazil to France 
which will save rehandling in the United States and 
the second tonnage across the Atlantic. In order to 
minimise haulage and be ready for any of the con- 
tingencies that arise in war, Major Goldstein has in- 
stalled three other model roasting and grinding plants, 
all duplicates of the original establishment and where 
we will be able to prepare the entire 6,000,000 daily 
rations by the first of the year. At the Paris plant 
he has trained a corps of men to operate them. 

With the addition of the ounce of chocolate as a 
daily ration component Major Goldstein launched his 
second venture. Once more General Rogers wanted 
to save tonnage and at the same time produce his own 
article and again the job was put up to the man who 
had revolutionised the coffee business. 



142 S. O. S. 

In France the manufacture of chocolate was greatly 
curtailed during the war. This meant that acres of 
chocolate-making machinery — most of it controlled 
by a small group of manufacturers — were idle. It 
took tact and diplomacy, however, to rent this ma- 
chinery but Goldstein acquired it. 

To-day in nearly a dozen factories we are pro- 
ducing over 5,000,000 packages of chocolate a month. 
Of this 4,000,000 pounds is the ration made up in 
ounce bars, while the rest is bonbons which are sold 
at the sales stores. With candy Major Goldstein has 
wrought another tonnage saving revolution. Before 
we went into the business these chocolate candies were 
sold in pound circular tins that cost the men 54 cents 
each. They not only used up vast quantities of tin 
but could not be carried on the person. Major Gold- 
stein packs the chocolates in flat cardboard half-pound 
packages that fit into the pocket. At the same time 
they save forty per cent in tin tonnage. What is 
equally important these packages are sold to the men 
at 24 cents each. We also produce in our factories 
in France 2,000,000 packages, or 1,000,000 pounds of 
stick candy and lemon drops a month. Formerly it 
was packed in circular tins and cost 35 cents; in the 
flat cardboard boxes it sells for 12 cents. Major 
Goldstein is not particularly popular with the Amer- 
ican candy manufacturer but he is ace high with the 
soldiers over there. 

By these master strokes Major Goldstein came to 
be regarded as a sort of Lloyd George of army pro- 
duction. "Let Goldstein do it," became the maxim. 



FEEDING THE DOUGHBOYS 143 

General Rogers now wanted to produce hard bread. 
Our unexpected participation in the Paris drive last 
July made this field commodity necessary. Major 
Goldstein was given a third chance to register his 
resourcefulness and he did not fail. 

Our hard bread output is now 18,000,000 packages, 
or 9,000,000 pounds a month. This so-called Iron 
Bread, which is made of flour and water, is probably 
the simplest and purest-baked product that the Amer- 
ican soldier eats. As a trifling side performance Major 
Goldstein has begun the manufacture of sweet crack- 
ers — the delicious petit beurre — the sweet butter 
crackers which are so popular in France and which 
we now turn out at the rate of 4,000,000 four-ounce 
packages a month. They are sold to the soldiers af 
the sales-stores at 6 cents a package. 

All army manufactured packages bear the insignia 
of the Quartermaster Corps and also the words: 
"Made by Q.M.C,, A.E.F., U.S.A." Likewise they 
show this inscription: "This is United States prop- 
erty and cannot be sold." These two precautions are 
taken to protect the business man from the sale of 
these articles by unscrupulous soldiers and to permit 
the American Government to live up to its agreement 
with the French, which is that all these articles are 
to be produced and used by the army alone. 

One further Goldstein achievement remains to be 
chronicled. When macaroni was adopted as a ration 
substitute and as a tonnage saver it was put up to this 
one-time Chicago wholesale grocer to deliver the 
goods, and he began to deliver them forty-eight hours 



144 S. O. S. 

after he got the order. By a mechanical process that 
rivals the coffee-roasting agency for simplicity and 
cleanliness he is turning out a million and a half 
pounds of macaroni a month. He is the Macaroni 
Man. 

Sum up the Goldstein army achievement and you 
find that he operates exactly seventy factories large 
and small that did not exist six months ago. With 
hard bread, macaroni, coffee, and candy he is saving 
the tonnage of eight large vessels a month. He has 
a Brigadier's sphere and authority. It is typical of 
the man that he should install a standardised factory 
control and operation very much like the system of 
salesmanship and store arrangement in effect in a 
well-known chain of retail cigar stores in the United 
States and which enables a man to go from a New 
York branch to one in San Francisco and begin sell- 
ing goods without delay. In the same way Major 
Goldstein is training factory managers and foremen 
so that they can change from one American establish- 
ment to another and take hold at once. 

Animating all these army factories is a spirit of 
loyalty and a determination to w^n with coffee roaster 
as with gun that finds expression in the astounding 
results that I have enumerated. They are inspired 
by the example of this self-made soldier — a type of the 
American by adoption who represents a patriotism 
behind the lines and elsewhere that is kin to the dash 
and gallantry of the fighting troops. There was scant 
aid or comfort for the German in the revelation of 
what the Goldsteins of the American army did. 



VI — The Cities of Supply 



THE manufactured output, imposing as it ap- 
pears, is a mere trifle in the vast sum of sup- 
plies that we need for our army in France. 
The great bulk of it must be brought from America. 
How do we keep the larder filled ? The answer brings 
us to another and all-important link in the chain of 
army supply and to the door of a vital branch of the 
American Business of War. 

To see how it is done we must go back to General 
Rogers' establishment at Tours. In that eight-foot 
blueprint chart of organisation that hangs on his wall 
the Division of Supplies has the place of honour in 
the centre. Technically known as "Estimate, Care 
and Distribution/' it keeps its finger on the state of 
food supply overseas and its renewal. In charge is 
Colonel C. B. Crusan, whose job is to see that the 
Quartermaster's shelves are always stocked. 

The backbone of the whole system is the Auto- 
matic Supply by which confusion, hardship and short- 
age of food and supplies are avoided. It means, as 
I explained in a previous chapter, the monthly upkeep 
of the ninety days of reserve stock — forty-five days 
at the Base Depots, thirty at the Intermediate and 
fifteen at the Advance — which is kept in France for 
all troops shipped from the United States. This 

i45 



146 s. o. s. 

monthly replacement must of course be modified to 
meet expansion or emergency. The Automatic Sup- 
ply also applies to forage, clothing, animal-drawn ve- 
hicles and all other supplies that come under the super- 
vision of the Quartermaster Corps. Hence Colonel 
Crusan's two principal labours are: first, to find out 
just how many mouths — men and beast — we have to 
feed and what we have on hand to feed them with; 
second, to allot the Quartermaster's tonnage so that 
all needs and deficiencies will be supplied. 

He is able to keep a daily check on supplies by a 
system of Intelligence which is so complete and com- 
prehensive that every morning there is laid on his 
desk and on the desk of the Chief Quartermaster, a 
chart which shows the exact amount of ration com- 
ponents on hand in terms of days at the twenty huge 
main Supply Depots in France. This Daily Supply 
State, as it is technically called, is one of the many 
remarkable exhibits of centralised supply control that 
provide the unfailing antidote against hardship and 
hunger. The information is sent in by telegraph be- 
tween 8 o'clock and midnight every night by Statistical 
Officers stationed at the Supply Depots. It arrives 
during the early hours, is summarised, and set down 
on individual cards. There is a card for each compo- 
nent. The master chart is made up from these cards 
and is ready by the time General Rogers and his as- 
sistants are at their desks in the morning. At a glance 
they know precisely what the food situation is. 

The Daily Chart of Ration Components and For- 
age on Hand — the Daily Supply State — is so concrete 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 147 

that a child can understand it. At one side is printed 
a list of thirty-one Ration Components, including 
fresh and tinned beef, bulk and tinned bacon, flour, 
dry and baked beans, rice, potatoes, prunes, coffee, 
sugar, milk, salt, lard and syrup. Also included are 
cigarettes, cigarette papers, smoking and chewing to- 
bacco and the three principal forage items, which are 
hay, oats and bran. 

At the top of the chart is a scale showing total 
days supplies up to 150. The supply on hand is indi- 
cated by a coloured horizontal bar under this scale. 
The Base Depots are represented by blue; the Inter- 
mediate by green ; the Advance by red. If a red, blue 
and green bar extends from item "Dry Beans" and 
stops under the figure 100 it means that we have one 
hundred days' supply of dry beans at all three types 
of Supply Depots. If the bar should only be green 
and blue (which never happens) it would mean that 
we only have beans at Base and Intermediate Depots. 
Where we have supplies that extend in days beyond 
150, such as, for example, 200, this number — 200 — 
is put in the last column. Such is the chart for "All 
Depots." There is also a chart for each individual 
Depot. If it is an Advance Depot the horizontal bar 
would be all red; the Intermediate Depot card would 
be all green ; while a Base would be in blue. A Depot 
chart is kept for each component. 

The "Number of Days Supply" as indicated on 
these charts is calculated by dividing the total quan- 
tity of each article by the ration allowance of that 
article, thus determining the number of rations. The 



148 S. O. S. 

number of rations is then divided by the Feeding 
Strength in France, and the result is the day's sup- 
ply for all these troops. This Feeding Strength is 
made up at regular intervals by the Adjutant Gen- 
eral. It is the sum total of every mouth that we 
must feed overseas. It does not matter whether it is 
the mouth of a General or a teamster. All mouths 
look alike when it comes to making up this great list 
of human maws which must be filled three times a 
day. 

The Daily Chart enables the Chief Quartermaster 
to know if he has a surplus or a shortage of a ration 
component. If he has a two hundred days' supply of 
dry beans and only sixty days' supply of salt he evens 
up these two items in his next tonnage allocation by 
ordering more salt. Now we come to another impor- 
tant function. As I have hitherto explained, the ton- 
nage for France is allocated every month. There is 
only a certain amount of tonnage which must be used 
to the best possible advantage. The Chief Quarter- 
master is allotted his share. It is up to him in turn 
to allocate his allocation. Here is where the Daily 
Chart comes in. From it he can see just what to req- 
uisition. If he has the hypothetical two hundred days' 
supply of dry beans on hand it means that he has a 
big surplus over requirements. He can cut down his 
requisition for beans and build up his requisition for 
salt. This is a modification of the Automatic Supply. 
Thus, wherever you touch it tonnage allocation be- 
comes a matter of balancing and evening up. 

Once that he knows what quantities to requisition 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 149 

he prepares his Priority Cable to the Acting Quar- 
termaster General at Washington. His items come 
in the order of their urgency. First Urgency is al- 
ways Rations; second is Forage; third is Clothing; 
fourth, Gasoline; fifth Equipage, which is tentage, 
cooking and table utensils and field kitchens; Miscel- 
laneous, which are tools, nails and kindred articles; 
and finally Animal-Drawn Vehicles. 

With the Quartermaster as with every other Serv- 
ice there are Exception Requisitions which are sep- 
arate from the Automatic Supply or even the modifi- 
cations of the Automatic Supply. These are the unex- 
pected demands that are constantly cropping up. They 
may be for special tools, a particular kind of food 
for convalescents, a special brand of flour. These 
are requisitioned in special cables and usually marked 
"Expedite." 

Every item needed by the Quartermaster is not 
specified in his monthly cable. If they were recorded 
his cable would be as long as a serial story because 
they number more than five thousand. At Washing- 
ton the standard requirements for every unit of twen- 
ty-five thousand men are on file and are shipped auto- 
matically. The variations become the modifications 
or the exceptional requirements. It is interesting to 
add that there is a card in the Quartermaster's Depart- 
ment at Tours for every one of the five thousand 
items on his list showing the exact quantity we have 
on hand in France, when new supplies were ordered, 
and when they are due. 

The Chief Quartermaster really runs a Department 



150 S. O. S. 

Store, or rather a succession of monster mail and 
telegraphic order houses. He is the great and glori- 
fied sutler. One of his responsibilities is the mainte- 
nance at Tours of a sample room which includes a 
"sealed and approved" sample of the myriad items 
that he handles. Side by side you can see tooth paste 
and Service ribbons; army ranges and field filtration 
plants; riding crops and communion sets. 

The Chief Quartermaster is the biggest shipper in 
the whole A.E.F. He monopolises railway trans- 
port just as he uses up considerably more than half 
of all the available tonnage. This means that the 
Chief of the Supplies Division must establish a very 
intimate liaison with the Transportation Department 
Every day Colonel Crusan gets a detailed report by 
telegraph from every Supply Depot giving the num- 
ber, freight, and destination of every subsistence car 
loaded and shipped. Here is where we establish an- 
other contact with our old friend the Railway Trans- 
port Officer. 

An adequate statistical system is as necessary to the 
successful conduct of the Quartermaster Corps as lu- 
bricating oil is to a machine. The whole structure 
of ceaseless operation depends upon systematised 
knowledge of what is going on. New Supply Depots 
are being constantly set up and the army grows daily. 
You are therefore not surprised to find at Tours a 
School for Statistical Officers which is in charge of 
the Chief Statistician of the Quartermaster Corps, 
who happens to be Captain R. H. Hess. In civil life 
he was a professor at the University of Wisconsin. 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 151 

Like so many thousands of his fellow Americans he 
became a Reserve or what the British call a Tem- 
porary Officer. Without the splendid service of these 
men, many of them already of middle age, who left 
school, factory, office or rostrum to don a uniform, 
the overseas work could not carry on. 

Every now and then some emergency reveals a 
high-priced specialist stuck away in the ranks or a 
subaltern. When Major-General Harbord became 
Commanding General of the Services of Supply a 
special train was made up for his use on inspection 
trips. The Chief Quartermaster wanted a man with 
experience with men and substance to take charge and 
run it. When the cards of the Personnel Division 
were examined (there is a card for every man stating 
his previous experience) the former Manager of a 
fashionable Boston Hotel who had received $10,000 
a year for his services, who had enlisted as private 
and risen to be a Second Lieutenant then in charge 
of a bakery Company, was discovered. He was called 
in from his obscure post, made Manager of the 
"C.G.'s" special train, which is run as efficiently as 
the Waldorf or the Blackstone Hotels. 

When you analyse the actual quantities that come 
under the control of the Quartermaster you stir up 
staggering statistics. In a war that was believed to 
have exhausted titanic numerals before we got in, 
the American figures make a whole new record. Let 
us now gird up our strength and take a plunge into 
this sea of bounding billions. It is no great secret 
that by the spring of 19 19 if peace had not come our 



152 S. O. S. 

army overseas would have been equal to the combined 
British and French forces in France. To maintain this 
army at full strength from July ist, 191 8, to June 
30th, 1919, would have required the annexation of 
a world of supplies without end or precedent. 

We will begin with subsistence. It would have 
taken approximately 500,000,000 pounds of fresh 
beef; 184,428,000 pounds of tinned beef; 570,000,000 
pounds of potatoes; 75,000,000 pounds of coffee, 
which will make 300,528,000 gallons; 31,269,000 
pounds of jam; 218,000,000 pounds of sugar; 888,- 
000,000 pounds of flour; 191,000,000 pounds of ba- 
con; and 65,500,000 pounds of evaporated milk. 

With clothing the figures are no less bewildering. 
The army needs would have been 11,304,000 pairs of 
breeches; 7,524,000 wool coats; 8,181,818 caps; 18,- 
000,000 shoes; 30,800,000 pairs of stockings; 3,280,- 

000 pairs of rubber boots; 14,292,000 spiral puttees 
or exactly 52,875 miles of the yellow leg wrappers. 

1 might add for further edification that the amount 
of cloth for breeches and wool coats will aggregate 
31,777,110 yards. 

If you want still another glimpse of super quantity 
I have only to add that in the matter of hay alone our 
beasts would have eaten 4,091,852,000 pounds. In 
bales double compressed and placed end to end this 
hay would reach one and a half times round the earth 
at the equator. Stacked ten feet high these bales 
would cover 460 acres. It is enough hay to last one 
horse 862,350 years. 

So far we have dealt with supplies on paper. We 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 153 

can now go into the mechanics of operation and fol- 
low the actual food from port to trench. We will 
begin at the docks where the trains, loaded direct 
from the ships, are rushed to the Base Supply Depots, 
the first stage of our journey and which are usually 
located from five to ten miles from the ports. Under 
ideal conditions these establishments must maintain 
forty-five days' rations for the whole overseas forces. 
They are all similar in scope and system. For the 
sake of illustration I will take one of the largest which 
incarnates American hustle at its height. It is at 
St. Sulpice near Bordeaux. 

A year ago the site was a serene stretch of farm 
and vineyard; to-day it is a City of Warehouses that 
throbs with incessant movement. Here as elsewhere 
the warehouses are arranged in the form of a huge 
ladder. Three warehouses, end on end, are the rungs 
while the main lines of railways are on the sides. 
Connecting these main lines are endless spurs which 
enable the cars to be switched right up to the door 
for unloading and reloading. There are usually three 
Grand Groups of structures each divided into Sections 
which contain six warehouses. Some of these Groups 
comprise fifty or sixty buildings. We use a standard 
warehouse fifty feet wide and four hundred feet long. 
Some are of fabricated steel and can be erected in 
ten hours; others have wooden supports with corru- 
gated iron sides and roofs. We must build and use 
at the same time. Often a warehouse is filled with 
food before it is under roof. These immense Depots 
literally grow over night. 



154 S. O. S. 

The specific Depot that we are visiting would have 
had, when completed, nearly 3,000,000 feet of closed 
storage and 6,000,000 feet of open storage. Two- 
thirds had been installed when I saw it late last Au- 
gust. Ninety per cent of the space is used for Quar- 
termaster Stores. You can wander through acres 
and acres of food. A single unfloored warehouse con- 
tains 12,000,000 pounds of flour. In a comparatively 
small group of buildings I saw 40,000,000 rations of 
milk; 75,000,000 rations of tobacco; 40,000,000 ra- 
tions of canned pork and beans; 35,000,000 rations of 
sugar; 35,000,000 rations of flour; and 20,000,000 
rations of coffee. This mass of merchandise, which 
merely represented the foot-hills of our overseas range 
of subsistence, was all brought from the United 
States, a fitting tribute to the triumph of our sea- 
transport over the German submarine. 

The vastness of these Depots is such that an in- 
spection on foot or even in an automobile is out of 
the question. They are so criss-crossed with rails 
that you must use a "Scooter," which is a motor- 
driven hand-car fitted for standard-gauge tracks. It 
took me nearly half an hour to travel over this plant 
at passenger train speed. Every important official has 
his own "Scooter" and you can see them scooting over 
the place at all hours of the day and night. 

Although millions of rations pour in and pass out 
every day there is such a perfect system of control 
that every case and sack is accounted for. Even the 
broken packages are carefully assembled and repacked. 
They are eternally under a sleepless scrutiny that lets 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 155 

no guilty commodity escape. The greatest possible 
care must be taken of all articles because they not 
only represent their value in money but weeks, some- 
times months, of solicitude and travel. 

In charge of the whole establishment is the Depot 
Quartermaster, Colonel Charles E. Wheatley, who 
knows every evening just how much food, clothing 
and equipment has arrived during the day; the exact 
quantity of supplies by items under his acres of roofs, 
and the precise number of loaded cars that have gone 
up the rail to the Intermediate and Advance Depots. 
At a Base Supply Depot the cars are loaded in bulk 
and not by individual ration components. Whole 
trainloads of groceries or forage pull out in rapid 
succession. A congestion here would be felt instantly 
along the whole line of food communication. 

This continuous check on stocks is possible because 
everything is recorded on paper. The warehouse sys- 
tem will illustrate. Every warehouse has a Store- 
keeper — a sergeant — usually assisted by a clerk — a 
private — who keeps a Stock Book of every article 
that is handled. Opposite each item is the number 
and mark of the car in which it arrived or departed. 
This Stock Book is balanced every night and the re- 
sult put on a Warehouse Receipt which is sent up to 
the Depot Quartermaster's Office where it becomes 
part of the general records. In addition every Ware- 
house keeps a Stock Card for every item it carries. 
It may be for tinned bacon, sugar, coffee, flour, coats, 
trousers or shoes. In the office of the Depot Quar- 
termaster is a Master Card for every item of supplies 



156 S. O. S. 

in the plant and which is the sum of these Ware- 
house Cards. From it the Statistical Officer takes the 
totals which he telegraphs to the Chief Quartermaster 
at Tours every night and which go to make up the 
Daily Chart of Ration Components that General Rog- 
ers finds on his desk every morning. 

At a Base Supply Depot as many as four hundred 
cars come and go every twenty-four hours. How 
are they handled? In a tiny office in the midst of 
those seething acres — "our little hut on the hump," 
as it is called, for the gravity hump of the railway 
classification yard is nearby — -sits the Co-ordinating 
Officer who runs the whole traffic show. His job is 
to co-ordinate orders, cars and shipments and, to 
quote one of them, "it is some co-ordinating." 

It would take a book to give a complete record of 
what these "C.O.'s" do. Briefly the system is this: 
when a train arrives from a port an Assistant Co- 
ordinating Officer chalks on each car the number of 
the warehouse to which it must go. This is called 
"spotting" a car. If it is flour it goes to a flour ware- 
house; canned goods to a grocery warehouse, and 
so on. He has in hand a list of available structures. 
Every effort is bent to "spot" cars at night and at 
noon while the labourers are eating or sleeping so as 
to avoid pulling cars in or out while others are being 
loaded or unloaded. After the train is marked it is 
broken up and switched to the warehouses for un- 
loading. This completes the work on incoming trains. 

For outgoing trains the shipping order first goes 
to the Co-ordinating Officer who computes the number 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 157 

of cars required. These cars are then "spotted" for 
the warehouses from which the supplies are to be 
secured. An "Order to load" automatically goes to 
the Storekeepers who not only load but attach to 
each car the United States Army label which gives, 
in English and French, the car number, mark, destina- 
tion, date of shipment, weight, contents, consignor, 
consignee and the signature of the person who loads 
and seals the car. It is now up to the Railway Trans- 
port Officer to assemble these cars and send them on 
their way. A so-called convoy, that is an enlisted 
man, is sent with each train-load of supplies as guard. 
He is required to report its arrival at destination by 
wire. 

The railway yards that are part of this establish- 
ment include a cold storage plant which will have a 
capacity of 4,000 tons of beef a day; a waterworks 
system ; coal yard ; ash dump, and completely equipped 
locomotive shops. Practically every scrap of mate- 
rial employed came across three thousand miles of 
submarine-infested seas. I cite these facts merely 
to show the immense amount of construction that 
attaches to the installation of these Depots alone. 

Prodigies of labour are performed every day at this 
and other Depots and they are merely part of the rou- 
tine. Upon one occasion an order came in for a 
hurry-up shipment of flour for the French army. It 
was at the close of a boiling day in August and the 
negro labourers — those smiling darkeys from the cot- 
ton plantations of the South — were "all in." The 
flour had to be loaded and shipped at once. The 



158 S. O. S. 

Director of Labour assembled his men (it was just 
after supper), told them of the emergency, and called 
for volunteers. Every man responded. In exactly 
fifty-five minutes those black heroes had loaded 700,- 
000 pounds of flour in sacks, and ten minutes later 
the special train was on its way. Such is the spirit of 
the "S.O.S." 

At another Base Supply Depot — Montoir, near St. 
Nazaire — bigger in area and action than the one I 
have just described, the project called for two hun- 
dred standard warehouses or 5,000,000 square feet 
of covered storage and 10,000,000 square feet of 
closed. More than half were up and filled when I 
was there while new buildings were going up at the 
rate of one a day. Two hundred miles of railway 
already linked up this City of Supply, the Mayor of 
which was Colonel Alexander E. Williams, Depot 
Quartermaster, a famous football star in his day at 
West Point and who bucks the line of supplies with 
the same force and success as he did on the grid-iron. 

While making a tour of inspection with him I saw 
German prisoners, American-captured, for the first 
time in this war. I asked one of them what he thought 
of America's war participation as shown by the vast 
community of supplies of which he was an unwilling 
member and he replied (as most of them replied wher- 
ever I found them within our lines) : "We had no 
idea that America was doing so much. Our officers 
told us that there were only a few of your soldiers 
in France." Here is a significant revelation of Ger- 
man methods. The great American offensive launched 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 159 

last September awakened the German private to the 
serious menace of the Yankee effort for the first time. 

Imposing as are these Base institutions they seem 
small beside the mammoth Intermediate Depot that 
we now reach on our pilgrimage to the front. Instead 
of a City it is a whole self-contained State of Supply 
with a Governor in the shape of the Commanding 
Officer, Colonel C. J. Symonds. His Commonwealth 
is six miles square; he is head of a population of 
twenty thousand; the three hundred buildings that 
dot his domain house nearly $100,000,000 worth of 
supplies. A year ago this swarming bee-hive of varied 
activity was a stretch of scrubby, sparsely cultivated, 
unimproved land. Such a place is Gievres, one of the 
many miracles of America in France. 

Here you scale the Peak of Supply. Although the 
Quartermaster, as usual, monopolises the bulk of 
space, there are stupendous warehouses for Ordnance, 
Medical, Engineering and Gas and Oil Services. You 
see bakeries going at full tilt; coffe roasting and 
grinding mills that consume 70,000 pounds of the 
green bean a day; a complete ice and cold storage 
plant; tank farms and army-operated gardens that 
help to provide the daily fresh vegetable ration. Now 
you see why I call this particular Intermediate Depot 
self-contained and why, when it was suddenly and 
temporarily converted into an Advance Depot, it was 
able to feed and equip the whole army that General 
Pershing swung into action over-night in the Paris 
drive last July and to take care of regular business 
at the same time. 



i6o S. O. S. 

Once more you have the bustling spectacle of im- 
mense rehandling, storing, reloading and shipment of 
bulk stores — all under that same admirable control 
that records everything and loses nothing. The Depot 
Quartermaster, Colonel O. G. Collins, is the centre of 
what seems to be an interminable effort. Yet it is at 
his fingers* ends all the time. The plan of Depot 
Standardisation put into effect by General Rogers last 
September has stabilised the whole storage process. 

There is only space left for me to enlarge upon two 
of the many features which make this Depot unique 
in the whole story of army supply. The first is the 
system of ice making and cold storage that we have 
set up in the midst of those one-time fields. When I 
tell you that this factory has a daily ice making capac- 
ity of 500 tons (it is the largest ice plant under one 
roof in the world) and that its five cold storage rooms 
hold 6,500 tons of beef, you get some idea of what 
one branch of the Quartermaster Corps here repre- 
sents. Figuring on a basis of a pound of meat per 
person one storage room alone would supply the city 
of Chicago for a whole day, while the total capacity 
of the five storage rooms would provide meat for the 
combined populations of New York, Chicago, Phila- 
delphia, St. Louis, Detroit, Boston and Cleveland for 
the same period. The cooling coils for the expansion 
of ammonia laid end to end would reach from New 
York to Philadelphia. This establishment built by 
the army for the army, and constructed in less than 
five months, employs six hundred men day and night. 
Every twenty- four hours one hundred and twenty cars 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 161 

are handled at its platforms. From tiled floor to 
smoke-stack all the material used was transported 
from America. 

The second outstanding feature is the remarkable 
system of Car Control. At this Depot more freight 
cars are handled than at any other. Seventeen en- 
gines are required for switching work alone. In 
August thirteen thousand cars came and went and 
the number increases each month. In the early days 
it was comparatively easy for the Depot Quarter- 
master to keep track of traffic. He could walk over 
the yards and see everything with his own eyes. When 
those tens of cars expanded into hundreds and the 
project annexed square miles this was a physical im- 
possibility. It is vitally necessary for him to know 
the Car and Labour situation every hour. He faced 
a serious problem. 

Colonel Collins met this emergency by devising 
what is known as the Location and Distribution Board. 
At first glance you think that it is one of those huge 
boards covered with coloured pegs that the military 
strategists use to block out war games. As a matter 
of fact it is a large board which is an exact plan in 
wood of the Quartermaster's Depot showing ware- 
houses, open storage space, ice plant and the railroad 
spurs. The Subsistence warehouses are in red, Cloth- 
ing in blue, Miscellaneous in green, Forage in yellow, 
and Animal Drawn Transportation in brown. In 
front of every miniature warehouse is a succession 
of holes for the insertion of pegs. These pegs repre- 
sent cars and are stuck in or removed as the cars are 



162 S. O. S. 

loaded, unloaded or sent away. A black peg repre- 
sents a car to be unloaded, a white peg is an empty 
car; a red peg a car to be switched; a combination 
green and black peg is a car in process of loading; a 
green peg is a car ready for shipment. The Labour 
units whose capacity is three cars every four hours, 
are indicated by steel nails that fit the holes. Here 
are the pawns and the board for the all-important 
game of car location and labour distribution. How 
is it played? 

Across from the Board sits the Traffic Officer who 
gets constant telephone reports of the "spotting" and 
location of cars and the progress of work. He com- 
municates these facts to three men whose sole task is 
to keep pegs and nails properly placed. The Board 
is reset every hour. Colonel Collins' s office adjoins 
the building in which it is located and he can step 
in every few minutes and see at a glance just what 
the situation is. If traffic is booming he stands by 
the Board all day. If the Board shows a string of 
black pegs with only one nail alongside it means that 
there is insufficient labour there. He at once looks 
for a predominance of labour elsewhere and orders a 
readjustment. Hence the Board enables work to 
progress with uniformity. Likewise it indicates the 
improper location of cars and thus prevents conges- 
tion. The whole objective in any Supply Depot is to 
keep cars moving. Every minute that a car stands 
idle its tonnage is lost to the army. Once congestion 
begins it is likely to< become cumulative. The Board 
provides insurance against this contingency. 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 163 

Knowing these facts you are not surprised when I 
say that a notable Supply achievement of the war was 
registered in this Depot. At 8.15 one morning last 
August a telegram was received ordering exactly 4,596 
tons of supplies, including 1,250,000 cans of toma- 
toes, 1,000,000 pounds of sugar, 600,000 cans of corn 
beef, 750,000 pounds of tinned hash and 150,000 
pounds of dry beans. At 6.15 o'clock in the evening 
— or just ten hours later — this colossal requisition, 
which required 457 cars for transport, was loaded and 
on its way to the Advance Depot. 

Such is the scope and capacity of an American 
Intermediate Supply Depot. In my war wanderings, 
which include much investigation of Supply systems 
in all the Allied armies, I have yet to encounter an 
institution that approaches this one in magnitude 
and operation. A twin Depot was in course of erec- 
tion at the time the armistice was signed. Uncle 
Sam did not do things by halves in France. More 
than this, every Supply establishment is capable of 
almost indefinite expansion. 

At the Advance Supply Depot you are one step 
nearer the front. It only carries a fifteen days' sup- 
ply and is therefore smaller than the other Depots 
we have visited. The bulk loading system now ends. 
The Depot becomes a huge Department Store that car- 
ries everything in stock from toothpicks to overcoats. 
All outbound trains are packed for Divisions or other 
units in Balanced Rations for actual consumption in 
training area, rest camp or trench. The full human 
Feeding Strength of a Division is 28,000 mouths. 



164 S. O. S. 

The Divisional Pack Train therefore hauls every ra- 
tion component from pepper to fresh beef for 28,000 
men. These trains go up every day. 

The Advance Depot warehouse must necessarily 
be a glorified grocery shop. It carries an average of 
1,125,000 Balanced Rations which flow from the load- 
ing platforms on gravity rollers into the waiting cars 
and are checked up by French girls who relieve able- 
bodied men for other tasks. Every unit, whether Ma- 
chine Gun Battalion or Division, has its goods marked 
in its name. The car, however, is consigned to the 
Railhead where the Railhead Officer, who has a lisf 
of all the organisations he serves, does the distribut- 
ing. Despite the ceaseless ebb and flow of supplies 
the Depot Quartermaster at an Advance Depot keeps 
a daily check on stock on hand; cars received, un- 
loaded and sent on; food, fuel, forage and clothes 
shipped, and the state of labour. 

But units are constantly moving; disease, accidents 
or casualties thin ranks ; replacements of men are con- 
tinually coming up. How can the Depot Quarter- 
master adapt his daily shipments to these constant 
changes? Once more you touch an interlocking sys- 
tem of Daily Intelligence that chronicles change and 
swiftly adapts supplies to needs. It brings us for 
the first time to the threshold of one of the most use- 
ful and important individuals in the whole "S.O.S." 
— the Regulating Officer. In the British Army he 
merely regulates the Divisional Trains at the Triage, 
as the Regulating Station is called in French. With 
us he not only does this but is the Traffic and Supply 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 165 

Boss in his part of the Advance Section and holds 
down a job of many-sided responsibilities. 

Let us tarry for a while with the Senior Regulating 
Officer of the A.E.F., Colonel M. R. Hilgard, a mas- 
ter manipulator of transportation and a sure enough 
live wire. "Be Brief and Be Quick" is his motto; 
there are no chairs in his office which occupies part 
of a little frame building near a railway station some- 
where in Northern France. A year ago this particular 
spot drowsed along with routine traffic; to-day it is 
a maze of rails that bustle with animation. Three 
thousand cars have found trackage there at one time. 
This Regulating Station is the neck of the whole 
American Supply Bottle. Choke it up and the flood 
of food stops and the fighting man goes hungry. 
The army accepts no excuses. Supplies must move. 
This is why you find a man of the Hilgard calibre in 
charge. He is at his desk from early morning until 
midnight and sometimes longer. When he goes to 
bed (he lives within a stone's throw) there is a tele- 
phone alongside. The traffic Manager of the Union 
Pacific system has never faced problems more vital 
or complicated than the anxieties that press down on 
him every hour of the twenty-four. He only knows 
one law, which is "Troops must be fed." Once when 
there was a congestion of traffic for a few hours he 
commandeered two hundred motor trucks from every- 
where and everybody and kept the supplies moving. 

To Colonel Hilgard — as to any other Regulating 
Officer — come the Daily Requisitions for food at the 
front. Every Division has a code name. Let us 



i66 S. O. S. 

say that it is Isabel. If Isabel is at full feeding 
strength the Daily Requisition for her would simply 
read : "Isabel 28,000." The Depot Quartermaster has 
the list of Divisional requirements on file and fills 
them automatically. If Isabel has been in action and 
has had casualties the Daily Wire would read: 
"Isabel 23,000," which means that this unit has 
lost 5,000 men. If Isabel has gone back to a rest 
camp at full strength the message would say: "Isabel 
has moved to Blank — No change." I have used the 
simplest and most elemental illustrations. Sometimes 
the units are indicated by numbers. 

At this point you will ask : "Who makes up these 
Feeding Strengths?" This is an easy matter. 
Every Division has a Divisional Quartermaster to 
whom each unit in that Division (and they are some- 
times scattered) reports its daily strength. These 
Divisional Quartermasters report to the Corps to 
which they are attached and the Corps in turn through 
its Gi or Procurement Section, reports to the G4 of 
the Army in the field of which it is a part. The G4, 
which is the Great Provider, renders the Consolidated 
Feeding Strength to the Regulating Officer. Hence 
Colonel Hilgard knows every day how many mouths 
must be fed. He orders the Depot Quartermaster of 
the Advance Depot nearest to him (in this case they 
happen to be located side by side) to ship. The loaded 
cars are turned over to the Regulating Officer who 
hands the Railway Transport Officer the list of units 
for whom they are intended. The trains are made 
up and sent off like clockwork to the Railheads. The 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 167 

record is twenty-three trains in ten hours. In August 
33,000 were handled at one station. Once started 
the Regulating Officer advises the Railhead Officer of 
their departure and gets a telegram announcing ar- 
rival. 

On the wall alongside Colonel Hilgard's desk 
hangs a huge map of the Advance Section and the 
Fighting Areas. Each Division is shown by a red 
flag (red is the divisional colour) bearing its number. 
Corps Headquarters are indicated by white and blue 
flags; Army Headquarters by red and white flags; 
and General Headquarters by a red, white and blue 
flag. The Regulating Officer must move hospital 
trains as well as food trains. On the map the loca- 
tion of every hospital train is represented by a white 
flag with a red cross. The presence of hospitals is 
revealed by red crosses. Each day the Colonel gets a 
report of all available empty hospital beds in the field 
and in the rear — also the total of "walking" cases. 
The moment an offensive is started he knows just 
where to rush the trains of mercy and succour. The 
"walking" cases can be shifted to other Sections. 

In addition Colonel Hilgard must know the com- 
plete State of American Supply throughout France. 
Every twenty-four hours he receives a report of ra- 
tions, fuel and forage on hand at all our Depots. If 
there is no sugar, for example, at the Advance Depots 
he knows that there is lots of it at the Base or Inter- 
mediate establishments. He can have a special train 
made up and prevent a sweetless day at the front. 
No wonder he lives with his job. 



168 S. O. S. 

When you reach the Railhead you are in the Zone 
of the Armies. You have gone as far as the standard 
gauge railroad dares to go. You are up where men 
wear steel helmets and are required to keep their gas 
masks accessible. There is the usual insurance 
against emergency for every Railhead carries three 
days' supplies in reserve and also a stock of under and 
outer clothing for five thousand men to renew the 
wear and tear of actual fighting and gas casualties. 
The moment a man is gassed his clothing is removed 
and destroyed. The underclothing is for use at the 
Bathing and Deverminising establishments. Just as 
soon as men come out of the trenches they are re- 
quired to bathe. Their clothes are fumigated — the 
"cooties" are no respecters of persons — and their 
underwear sent back to a Salvage Depot. 

From Railhead the supplies are shipped by motor 
trucks or light railways to the Refilling Point which 
is the last food frontier. The boom of guns is now 
heard and the nights are often made hideous by air 
raiders. More than one Refilling Point has lost its 
entire stock in trade by shell explosion. Work never 
ceases for most of the road traffic up here must be 
under the friendly cover of night. Although exposed 
to all these hazards the Refilling Point maintains an 
adequate system of office records and a scrutiny which 
includes an inspection of the fresh beef that comes 
in every day. 

There are no frills in this much-menaced Army 
Retail Store. Its customers are hungry soldiers 
whose minds are mainly on two things: food and 



THE CITIES OF SUPPLY 169 

fighting. They brook no delay. Every morning 
Non-commissioned officers arrive with Ration Re- 
turns made out by the Subsistence officers of their 
units and which are the orders for the next day's sup- 
plies. These supplies are loaded on light railways if 
the country is not too much exposed to shell-fire, or 
on three-ton motor trucks. Where food is furnished 
to men actually engaged in combat it is conveyed to 
them in that ancient army standby, the mule-drawn 
wagon. These vehicles deliver their freight to the 
Supply or Mess Sergeants at the "dumps" in the 
field, who hand them over to the cooks. 

Even within sight of No Man's Land there is the 
inevitable precaution against hunger and hardship 
which marks the whole American Supply Service. It 
is embodied in the Reserve Ration of canned meat, 
hard bread, essence of coffee, sugar and chocolate, 
packed in gas-proof tin containers and which are kept 
constantly in the trenches. They are only consumed 
in a grave emergency such as a break-down in food 
supply in the rear and by order of the Commanding 
Officer. These containers hold twenty-five rations 
each and are so hermetically sealed that I have seen 
them floating around in water. They are the prop- 
erty of the trenches and must not be removed. 

At the Refilling Point you encounter a striking illus- 
tration of American Supply resource. Wherever a 
considerable body of our foops is stationed you find 
a Sales and Commissary Store where the men can 
buy little luxuries such as candy, tooth brushes and 
paste, shaving sticks, cigars and razor blades at cost. 



170 S. O. S. 

When men are in the trenches or in the lines imme- 
diately behind, they can not go to these Stores. In 
order to supply their wants the Store goes to them 
in the shape of a Travelling Commissary which is 
nothing more or less than an old-time pedlar's outfit 
inhabiting a five-ton motor truck. At dawn this shop 
on wheels stocks up its shelves and chugs down the 
road often under shell-fire and does business not only 
within sound of the guns but frequently within gun- 
shot. It represents the final word in army con- 
venience. 

You have now followed the doughboys' food from 
ship to stomach. The only American soldier in France 
who went unfed was a dead one. 



VII — Detroit in France 



IN former wars the Constitution followed the Flag. 
Now the automobile is hot on the heels of the 
standard-bearer and sometimes forges ahead. 
The stupendous proportions of the great European 
struggle, no matter from what angle you observe 
them, have been made possible by motor equipment. 
Without the gasolene-propelled vehicle the fighting 
hosts could not be adequately supplied or equipped. 
Likewise gains could not be swiftly consolidated; huge 
howitzers would be as immobile as fortress guns; 
quick deployment of reserves out of the question. In 
short, Mechanical Transport is one of the vital war 
agencies. With the possible exception of Subsistence 
nothing is more essential to the grim game. 

When I approached the motor domain of our 
army abroad in my investigation of the Services of 
Supply of which it is part, I felt that here, as in no 
other branch, would I find the complete dramatisation 
of American productive and organising genius. The 
nation that had standardised the low-priced car and 
made quantity output of automobiles so automatic as 
to become an incidental event in the larger story of 
its industrial development, would surely give War 
its supreme lesson in Motorisation. Curiously 
enough I found a striking repetition of Mechanical 

171 



172 S. O. S. 

Transport history in the war activities of the two 
English-speaking nations. 

When Britain leaped to arms almost overnight she 
had no regular army motor units of consequence. 
The War Office depended for the provision of motor 
transport in the event of the mobilisation of an Expe- 
ditionary Force on a certain number of subsidised 
trucks already in use in civil work and on civilian 
chauffeurs and drivers. Hence, when the Empire 
rushed to the relief of Belgium it only had this more 
or less makeshift equipment. It started in to buy 
trucks both in the United States and at home and the 
result was an infinite variety of types and make. 
Here began the outstanding evil in army motor main- 
tenance, which was — and remains — the need of tens 
of thousands of different kinds of spare parts and 
accessories for the upkeep of this Congress of Vehi- 
cles. Standardisation, which means interchangeable 
parts, was out of the question. 

Practically the same thing happened when America 
"came in." Despite three years of warning and with 
the exception of the experience that we gained in 
Mexico and during mobilisation on the border, our 
army was unprepared with any sort of sufficient Motor 
Transport. We had to comb out the available sup- 
ply of trucks and cars and the result was that the 
Mechanical Transport equipment in France for twelve 
months after we entered the conflict represented 
almost every known available product. When I tell 
you that we are required to keep 57,000 different non- 
interchangeable spare parts in stock you get some 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 173 

idea of the price we pay for unreadiness in motor 
equipment. More than this, we must constantly main- 
tain 13,000 kinds of bolts, nuts and screws, which 
means that the shelves of our spare part store-rooms 
carry a total of 70,000 separate items. With the ex- 
ception of the parts for the comparatively few British, 
French and Italian cars that we use, all this must 
be brought from the United States. 

It simply means that with Mechanical Transport, 
as with practically every other Service of Supply, we 
had to begin at the very beginning and build from 
the ground up. In the face of these handicaps, and 
every difficulty that lack of standardisation imposes, 
our fighting subsistence forces, so far as the motor is 
concerned, have been able to carry on from the start. 
The same spirit of indomitable endeavour that planted 
bridges, reared docks and made cities of Supply grow 
out of the swamps, has found incarnation in the 
American Motor World that has arisen overseas. 
It not only operates and maintains over 50,000 gaso- 
lene-driven vehicles but somewhere in that war-torn 
land you can find a dynamic cross-section of Detroit 
which builds automobiles from raw material up to 
the finished vehicle on wheels ready for peaceful per- 
formance or combat work. The story of the Motor 
Transport Corps — the "M.T.C." as it is more com- 
monly known — is one of the impressive narratives of 
American war participation. 

Let us go back a bit. When General Pershing 
dashed into Mexico "to capture Villa dead or alive" 
the biggest problem of the moment was to supply him 



174 S. O. S. 

because his food had to be carried across many miles 
of arid country. At that time the Chief Quarter- 
master of the Southern Department, charged with the 
task of feeding the Pershing Expedition, was our old 
friend Major General Harry L. Rogers, the present 
Chief Quartermaster of the American Expeditionary 
Force and Quartermaster General to the whole Army. 
He said to himself: "The only way to maintain food 
communications in Mexico is with motor-trucks." 
But where were the trucks to come from? 

Like England we had talked and written a great 
deal about the value of the motor-truck to the army 
yet at that time there were less than a thousand in 
the whole American military establishment and like 
the army they were scattered throughout the United 
States and the Philippines. When a certain American 
Major General wanted a car for use on a long inspec- 
tion trip in California all he could get was authority 
to buy a "flivver" ! This happened on March 16th — 
less than three weeks before we entered the war. 

The trouble was that the old dyed-in-the-wool regu- 
lar officer confused Horse Transport with Mechanical 
Transport, which are totally different propositions. 
With the horse and wagon only a fixed amount of 
work can be done each day. With a mechanically 
driven vehicle there is no such restriction. Normally 
motor equipment may be operated the greater part 
of the twenty- four hours. It becomes merely a matter 
of care and upkeep. 

In the vernacular of trade General Rogers — he was 
then only a Colonel — "sold" the idea of Mechanical 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 175 

Transport to the War Department. Then, as now, he 
was determined that Pershing's men should not go 
unfed. We began to buy trucks, cars and tractors. 
They were shipped down to El Paso by Express, so 
urgent was the need. We had to buy anywhere and 
everywhere. The first trains of trucks that went out 
across those scorching mesas were manned by civilian 
chauffeurs in charge of regular officers. These offi- 
cers laid the foundations of our overseas motor ma- 
chine out of the experience gained in those blistering 
Texas days. Thus our whole Motor Transport or- 
ganisation really began down on the border. No 
wonder that a certain well-known truck manufac- 
turer with a sense of humour put the following dedi- 
cation in a privately-printed and circulated album of 
photographic views showing his truck trains in use 
in the Mexican campaign: 

"To Francisco Villa who made possible the begin- 
ning of American Motor Transport in the war with 
Germany." 

As a result of the Mexican experience we had 
about 2,400 trucks on April 1st, 19 17. The personnel 
was organised in Motor Truck Companies of 75 men 
each. These Companies formed the nucleus of the 
Mechanical Transport personnel which now numbers 
nearly 10,000 men in France alone and what will even- 
tually be an army of over 50,000. The moment we 
hurled the gauntlet at the foot of the Kaiser we were 
confronted with the need of adequate mechanical 
transport and its twin problem of immediate procure- 
ment. We had only acquired what we urgently 



176 S. O. S. 

needed, but thanks to Villa we had the germ of a 
service which now began to expand. 

Among the veterans of the Mexican campaign was 
the then Major F. H. Pope — (he is now Colonel) — 
a young West Pointer, stocky of build and determined 
of purpose, who had studied motor transport in the 
French Army Supply School in 191 5. He was in 
charge of one of the largest truck trains that chugged 
into Mexico with food and supplies for the Pershing 
Expedition. Realising the need of a trained person- 
nel for the army, he started a School for Chauffeurs 
at San Antonio where he was able to turn out a 
truck driver in ten days in what was facetiously called 
a "Get-trained-quick" course. Just as Pope was one 
of the pioneers in Texas so was he now a path-finder 
in France. Around him was reared the structure of 
our Motor Transport Service abroad. This, however, 
is a later story. 

The moment we went to war the Reserve Officers 
began to pour in. Every man who had ever sold an 
automobile, owned one, or wanted to own one, had 
an ambition to get into the Motor Transport Service. 
Scores of these men at once became Chauffeurs-In- 
structors and were shunted off to the cantonments 
where they started schools. The so-called Truck 
Master, usually a sergeant who had served in Mexico, 
built up the Motor organisations in these camps. 
Those seasoned three and five-ton trucks that had 
travelled axle-deep through the Mexican sands were 
commandeered for work at home instead of being 
used as the beginnings of the motor fleets in France. 




£* 




COLONEL F. II. POPE 



COLONEL H. A. HEGEMAN 




LIEUT. COL. M. R. WAINER 




COLONEL H. C. SMITHER 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 177 

Our first Expeditionary Force sailed in June, 19 17. 
It had to have motor transport. America was forced 
to duplicate England's performance and begin to buy 
her automobile equipment right and left and wherever 
she could lay hands on a truck car or tractor. Each 
Motor Unit started to purchase on its own. This is 
why every known make of any capacity is represented 
to-day among the 50,000 odd vehicles that we have 
overseas. 

In the midst of that whirlwind of buying, however, 
we did not lose sight of the need of a standardised 
vehicle and there began an attempt at standardisation, 
now well underway, which will enable America to 
present to the industrial world after the war a type 
of truck that is bound to be a tremendous factor in 
peace just as it is rapidly becoming an invaluable aid 
to war. 

By a curious coincidence General Pershing's needs 
were responsible for the organisation of a Motor 
Transport Service in the army at home and they also 
formed the basis of American gasolene-driven squad- 
rons abroad. With the first troops in France came 
motors. A small unit known as Motor Truck Group 
Number 1 which included four Truck Companies and 
a mobile machine shop, which is a repair outfit on 
wheels, arrived with the first Expeditionary Force. 
As the weeks passed a good deal of mechanical trans- 
portation began to come in from the United States. 
Each ship brought so-called Casual Chauffeur Com- 
panies. A casual, whether officer or enlisted man, is 
an unassigned soldier. These men and machines re- 



178 S. O. S. 

mained without a definite head until September, 19 17, 
when the Commander-in-Chief sent a memorandum to 
General Rogers, just installed as Chief Quartermaster, 
directing that all Motor Transport be placed under his 
direction. The Father of Mechanical Transport to 
the American Army thus became sponsor for its de- 
velopment in the World War and on a scale un- 
dreamed of when he first urged motorisation down 
at Texas. 

Meanwhile Colonel F. H. Pope had arrived in 
France. General Rogers looked about for a tem- 
porary Head of the infant service. His choice fell on 
the stocky young officer who had sweated on those 
early truck trains under the scorching Mexican sun. 
Pope took hold at once, the scattered vehicles and 
drivers were assembled under a centralised authority; 
Motor Reception Parks were established at the Base 
ports, and "M.T." came into being as a full-fledged 
if struggling organisation. 

The handicaps which attended the launching of 
every Service of Supply abroad took up their abode 
with Motor Transport. There was the usual short- 
age of equipment and trained personnel. Colonel 
Pope and his colleagues began to buy anything they 
could get in Europe and especially in England, which 
accounts for the fact that you often see five-ton 
lorries still bearing the "W.D." and the familiar white 
arrow that proclaim the British War Office origin, 
manned by doughboys and carrying American supplies. 
This buying in Britain did three things. It provided 
immediate equipment, saved tonnage, and minimised 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 179 

the spare part problem. Profiting by this experience 
we are now using Italian cars in Italy. It pays to 
use the car of the country because equipment can be 
renewed without delay. 

As soon as our motor engine was cranked up in 
France the difference between operation there and in 
Mexico — the only other place where American equip- 
ment had seen active service — became apparent. In 
Villa's country there was a small volume of business 
and a long haul with no fuel or repair stations. In 
France it was just the reverse. The bulk of carry- 
ing was tremendous, the distances were short, and by 
agreement with the British and French Motor Services 
our trucks and cars could obtain fuel and repairs prac- 
tically every ten or twenty miles if necessary. This 
co-operative effort has been invaluable, especially in 
the pioneer days when our Service was in the building. 

For a considerable period Motor Transport re- 
mained under the control of the Chief Quartermaster. 
It grew so fast, however, that it was made a separate 
Service with a Director in Charge and became part of 
the Service of Utilities, which was subsequently ex- 
panded into the present Services of Supply. This 
means that the Capital of our Motor Empire abroad 
is in that historic little city of Tours, the nerve centre 
of Supply and Transport for the whole A.E.F. In 
a reorganisation growing out of a swift expansion 
Brigadier General M. L. Walker, a far-visioned engi- 
neer of ripe army experience, became Director of what 
is now officially known as the Motor Transport Corps. 
Colonel Pope was installed as Deputy Director. From 



180 S. O. S. 

their offices radiates the control of the American 
Motor Machine across the sea. 

If you have read the preceding chapters in this book 
you know that the management of American Busi- 
ness of War is precisely like that of any big Corpora- 
tion that is scientifically and therefore efficiently con- 
ducted. Hence the Motor Transport Corps is thor- 
oughly charted and diagrammed. The scope and 
function of every branch from the immense Recep- 
tion Parks at the ports which contain thousands of 
vehicles, down to a lonely garage on the highway in 
charge of one man, are on paper. Behind the Director 
hangs a huge map of the roads of France showing 
the truck routes from sea to front in red ; with Recep- 
tion and Service Parks in blue; with A.E.F. gasolene 
stations indicated by white flags and French by 
yellow. 

The whole "M.T.C." naturally falls into two sep- 
arate sections : one which operates in the domain of the 
Services of Supply behind the lines; the other which 
is part of the Combat Armies in the field. By fol- 
lowing the equipment from the time it arrives in 
France until it delivers men, food and ammunition at 
the firing line you can run the whole range and see 
precisely how the scheme operates. 

Looking at the general plan of organisation in the 
S.O.S. first you find that the Director of the Motor 
Transport Corps sits as President of the concern, 
while the Deputy Director is Vice President and Gen- 
eral Manager. The six principal Divisions are: Ad- 
ministration, which deals with office management, per- 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 181 

sonnel and statistics; Procurement, which obtains 
equipment and supplies and deals with the tonnage 
problem; Maintenance, which has the colossal job of 
spare part renewal, repairs and salvage; Operations, 
which distributes all machines and has particular 
charge of the truck convoys ; Engineering, which pro- 
vides technical advice and deals with standardisation; 
and Plans and Projects, which anticipates future needs 
and adapts the present structure to whatever emer- 
gency may arise. 

Each of these Divisions has its own chart of or- 
ganisation which, after the free and easy manner of 
motor life, is called the "Keep Your Eye on the Ball 
Chart" because the unuttered injunction everywhere in 
this highly-charged branch of army work is "Step 
Lively/' Every man in the Motor Transport Service 
knows just what is required of him because, from 
Director down to the keeper of that lonely way-side 
garage, he has his job concretely before him on the 
wall. He can never say: "I didn't know that this 
was part of my work." The Motor Transport Ser- 
vice is excuse-proof. 

We cannot make our motor trip from sea to front 
without first knowing how our car got to France. 
We must begin therefore with the Source of Supply, 
which is, in the main, the chain of factories in the 
United States whose lathes and forges rattle and clang 
day and night to meet the incessant demands of 
Army Motor Transport. The Bridge of Ships across 
the sea has its prototype on land in the Bridge of 



182 S. O. S. 

Trucks that must carry men and supplies across the 
fertile fields of France. 

Washington, which is the Procurement Centre, must 
know just what equipment to ship abroad. France 
therefore periodically prepares the Master Chart of 
Motor Requirements. Its duplicate hangs at Tours. 
When you see these immense sheets — they are six 
feet high — you begin to realise just what it means 
to keep our Motor Empire going. The Truck Sheet 
alone calls for 119 different kinds of trucks, tenders, 
trailers, carts and ambulances. This immense variety 
naturally results from the fact that every Service in 
France draws its equipment from the "M.T.C." 
There must be special trucks and trailers for the Air 
Service; huge steel- wheeled carriers for Forestry 
Service; portable auto rock crushers; trucks for tar 
distributing; trailers for heating oil and water; trucks 
for balloon winches; trailers with portable cranes; 
gasolene tank trucks, kitchen trail-mobiles; machine 
gun cars; dental trucks which are travelling dental 
laboratories with every fixture of a well-equipped den- 
tist office in New York or Philadelphia; ammunition 
trucks; radio trucks on which the field wireless out- 
fits are mounted ; fire apparatus trucks, because every 
Base and Supply Depot has its completely equipped 
motorised Fire Department; mobile machine shops; 
and photographic trailers on which the Air Service 
builds its itinerant studios. I could continue the list 
for a good while. Practically every Service in 
France has some special kind of motor equipment 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 183 

which must be described down to the last screw in a 
specification which goes to Washington. 

All motor equipment for France must be ordered 
not less than three and usually four months ahead; 
first because it takes time for manufacture, and sec- 
ond because of the delays and hazards of sea trans- 
port. This means that the Demands up to January 
1st, 19 19, are already long on file in the office of the 
Acting Quartermaster General in Washington and the 
orders are being filled in scores of motor plants from 
Detroit south. 

These Motor Transport army requirements from 
motor cycles up to specially constructed five-ton trucks 
are based on army needs as shown by organisations 
in France, by advance notice of troop sailings, and 
wear and tear on equipment in use and the necessity 
of keeping reserve stocks. With motor equipment 
as with food and all other supplies, there must be a 
large available surplus to meet losses due to enemy 
action, accidents or the terrific and incessant usage. 
A chart, which is a marvel of detail, sets forth the 
precise situation in France. The equipment in use or 
in Reception and Reserve Parks is in black, while the 
needs of the A.E.F. are indicated in red. This is 
the so-called Status of Motor Vehicles in France. 

Motor Transport gets an allotment of tonnage from 
the United States every month just like the Quarter- 
master Corps or the Air Service. If this allotment 
is for 100,000 tons the Procurement Division must 
make up its own Priority Schedule which indicates 
whether trucks or passenger cars have the bulk of the 



184 S. O. S. 

, ^ 

space. These requirements are reduced to weight and 
cubic tons and then transmitted to the Gi Section of 
the General Staff which forwards them to Washing- 
ton. In the Acting Quartermaster General's office in 
Washington is a Motor Transport Bureau which 
places contracts with the manufacturers. 

As soon as a truck or car reaches a port in France 
it is caught up in a control which keeps a continuous 
check on it during the whole period of service and 
until it goes into the scrap-heap. Even then the ma- 
terial is salvaged and becomes part of the recorded 
structure of a new vehicle or a retrieved part. At 
each port that we use you find a so-called Motor Re- 
ception Park, which means precisely what the name 
implies. Here you find every kind of mechanical 
transport. Each Park has a complete organisation in 
charge of the Commanding Officer who has the usual 
Administrative and Service Divisions under him. 
Administration deals with office management, person- 
nel, records, barracks for the hundreds of casuals who 
come in constantly from America. In the Service 
Branch you find inspection, park problems, supplies, 
convoying, maintenance and repair. In other words, 
each of these Parks — and the same thing obtains in 
all the other kinds of Parks which you will find as 
you go up the line — is a completely equipped self-con- 
tained Service, able to set up, repair and maintain any 
kind of motor transport. Here is where the value of 
a standardised system comes in. 

Motor Transport arrives in France in two ways: 
One portion is shipped on its own wheels, which 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 185 

means that it is lifted by cranes straight from the 
deck of a ship on which it travels. In this case the 
vehicles are camouflaged in harmony with the camou- 
flage of the ship. Hence you frequently see at the 
ports a truck body that looks as if it were a wiggly 
germ chart, while the wheels are a sedate and sober 
grey. Such vehicles are of course repainted the mo- 
ment they get to the Reception Park. 

Trucks and cars are also shipped crated and unas- 
sembled. At some ports the assembling is done al- 
most within a stone's throw of the docks and in the 
open air, by a process that reminds you of the system 
in a famous Detroit quantity output factory. The 
axles are put on a skidway and started down by 
gravity. In rapid succession each part is added until 
it rolls away on its own wheels. At one place fifty 
five-ton trucks were assembled in this way in nine 
hours. 

As soon as trucks or cars are ready to be moved 
they are hitched together in trains and hauled out to 
the Reception Park which is usually nearby. The 
progress of a new vehicle from the time it is unloaded 
or set up until issued to a unit must be, to quote the 
official instructions: "A continuous How in a given 
direction/' This means that the equipment never 
doubles on its tracks and there is no lost motion. Ar- 
riving at the Park it goes into the Repair Shop for 
a thorough overhauling and repainting, after which 
it is sent to the Issue Section of the Park where it 
remains until assigned. Meanwhile it is maintained 
in perfect condition; the motor is started up every 



186 S. O. S. 

day; when the order comes to move it can be started 
off without a moment's delay. 

Most of these Reception Parks, like our Supply 
Cities, have risen overnight. One week a stretch of 
flats or swamp offends the eye; the next it is covered 
with acres of trucks and cars whose freshly painted 
bodies gleam in the sunlight. Office buildings, bar- 
racks and kitchens have also sprung up like magic. 
It is all part of the many-sided miracle of America 
in France. These Parks are usually in charge of Re- 
serve Officers who have left motor factories or sales- 
rooms to do their bit in the army. Typical of these 
men is the Commanding Officer at the largest Base 
Park — at St. Nazaire — who is Lieut-Col. Will H. 
Brown, one of the founders of a mighty automobile 
institution in the Middle West; who served a term 
as State Senator in Indiana and who dropped every- 
thing to go to France at the outbreak of war. 
Throughout the whole "M.T.C." you find this calibre 
of man who has met the emergency with the same 
courage and resource with which armed attack is faced 
at the front. t 

Here is a case in point : Last winter when the Sec- 
ond Reception Park was in process of organisation a 
hurry-up requisition came from our little army up in 
storm-ridden Northern France. It read: "Send two 
truck trains at once." In charge of this Park was 
Major C. M. Elwell, a rangy, sinewy Middle West- 
erner who had been a prize automobile salesman. He 
had the chasses but no bodies. He called his small 
force together and said : "The army must have those 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 187 

trucks. We have no bodies. Therefore we must 
build them." Day and night his men, who included 
collegians fresh from their studies, literally worked 
like beavers. Fortunately there were three carpenters 
among them. They improvised hay-wagon bodies 
and in less than a week forty trucks were on the way 
to the front. 

As soon as a vehicle arrives at the Reception Park 
it receives its first dose of routine. Like a convict — 
and no galley slave ever worked harder than our 
Motor Transport in France — it gets a number and 
henceforth it is known only by that numeral, which is 
the so-called "U.S. Number." This rule applies to 
the Commander-in-Chief's limousine with the same 
force as to a "flivver." The numbering system is char- 
acteristic of the Service. The first numeral always 
indicates the Type of Car. All our motor vehicles 
are classified according to type. Passenger cars, re- 
gardless of size or body, are Type 1 ; light delivery 
trucks of one-ton or less are Type 2 ; three and four- 
ton trucks are Type 4; five-ton trucks and over are 
Type 5; motor cycles with or without side-cars are 
Type 6; caterpillars which haul the heavy guns are 
Type 9; even the kitchen trailers have a designation 
which is Type 10. 

The United States numbers are arranged so as to 
indicate the type. For example, the official registra- 
tion number of a passenger car will always begin with 
1 ; the United States number of a five-ton truck would 
begin with 5 and so on. Thus you find that the first 
registered passenger car in the A.E.F. is II, while the 



1 88 S. O. S. 

first registered five-ton truck is 51. If you should see 
a truck on the road bearing the United States number 
5125 you will at once know that it is a five-ton truck. 
Blocks of registration numbers are periodically for- 
warded by the Director of the "M.T.C." to the Recep- 
tion Park for issue to the incoming vehicles. This 
registration is made by a clerk who has a completely 
equipped office, including typewriter and card index, 
in the body of a five-ton truck which is located in 
many instances out in the open air and in the midst 
of the Reception Park. 

Immediately after registration, all the equipment 
that comes with the vehicle is taken off and stored in 
a reservoir of accessories. This procedure is just the 
opposite of the British method which assigns a driver, 
helper and all essential tools to a truck when it is 
forwarded to France. These two men and the initial 
equipment remain with the vehicle until it is worn out 
or destroyed, as they are put out of commission. Our 
personnel on the other hand is assigned from the Pools 
of Casuals which are to be found at every Park. 

Every truck has a Log Book which must be kept up 
to date by the driver. It therefore becomes the 
biography of this particular piece of equipment. The 
title of the volume is the U.S. Number. It is a 
complete record of all transfers, repairs, and supplies. 
The tabulated information in these books is of great 
value to the Statisticians of the Corps. In addition 
it is a form of publicity which prevents waste of 
gasolene and spare parts. 

The U.S. Number is only one detail of the control 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 189 

and supervision which now take firm hold of the trans- 
port. As soon as the registration number (it is first 
written on a red card which is tied to the steering 
wheel and afterwards stencilled in white paint on the 
sides and backs of the vehicles), a so-called Registra- 
tion Card is made out in duplicate which is the be- 
ginning of the permanent history of the car. There 
is a coloured card for each type of vehicle. For 
trucks it is white; for touring-cars and ambulances, 
yellow; for motor-cycles, brown. These cards con- 
tain the technical record of the vehicle and together 
they form the up-to-the-minute Census of Motor 
Transport in France. They contain the U.S. Number, 
type, model, make, capacity in load, gas and oil tank, 
serial number, motor number, and kind of ignition 
and lighting systems. There is also a complete rec- 
ord of the tires including make, size in front and rear 
and whether pressed on or demountable. The date 
and place of arrival are also recorded. All this is 
on one half of the face of the card. 

The other half is devoted to the history of the 
vehicle. If a truck is transferred twenty times in 
the course of six months the date and place of transfer 
and incidental remarks are chronicled. If you want 
to know the location and previous service of any piece 
of mechanical transport in the A.E.F. you can get it 
at a glance from the duplicate file of these Registra- 
tion Cards — the Organisation File as it is termed — 
kept in the office of the Director General of the 
"M.T.C." at Tours. 

Here is the way it works : I once asked Colonel Pope 



190 s. o. s. 

the location of what I thought was the hypothetical 
number of a five-ton truck. He wrote the number on 
a sheet of paper, sent for a messenger and asked him 
to get the record of that number. In less than five 
minutes the messenger returned with a typewritten 
sheet which stated that the five-ton truck bearing this 
actual number had arrived in France on June 1st at 
Blank port; that it had been assigned first to a field 
bakery at X ; then to the Motor Corps at the In- 
termediate Supply Depot; later it was reassigned to 
Y. Division, and at that particular moment was in 
service in the Toul sector with the Z. Division. 
Such is the check that is kept upon everything on 
wheels that uses a gasolene engine in France. You 
can trace a motor-cycle, a runabout or a kitchen 
trailer with the same ease and accuracy. 

This is why the Director of Mechanical Transport 
is enabled to keep his finger constantly on the whole 
overseas situation. Every morning General Walker 
finds on his desk the typewritten Daily Schedule of 
Mechanical Transport which gives equipment arrival 
at ports the day before ; the stocks at Parks ; the total 
number of vehicles ordered for service at the front 
and at the rear; the state of spare parts and the state 
of personnel. It is just one of the many similar 
charts in use in the various Services of Supply that 
express scientific business management at its best. 
This is only possible because the first link in the chain 
of Motor Supply was forged right at the Reception 
Park. 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 191 

By this time you realise that the Reception Park 
is an important institution. It not only receives, 
marks and concentrates equipment but by the nature 
of its location is the great Centre of Assignment. 
When a Division at the front, a Supply Depot, or a 
Headquarters anywhere wants a truck or a passenger 
car it makes a requisition on the Director at Tours. 
He knows from his Daily Schedule and also from a 
Daily Report of Unassigned Motor Vehicles at Bases 
and Reserve Parks just what stock he has on hand. 
This stock I might add is known as a Liquid Inven- 
tory. Through the Assignment Bureau he orders 
Reception Park to send the equipment desired. At 
the same time the unit to which it is assigned is in- 
formed. This enables consignor and consignee to 
get together and know where they are. There is a 
constant flow of trucks and cars from this Liquid 
Supply. Hence its name. 

Wherever you turn in an examination of the Motor 
Transport Corps you find some illuminating example 
of co-operation that will have its large lesson after 
the war. At the Reception Parks, for instance, you 
discover the so-called Pooling System — a distinctive 
American contribution to war transport standardisa- 
tion. It grew out of the basic law of operating effi- 
ciency in motor transport which is that a vehicle must 
be worked to capacity both as to time and load. 
Every minute that the road wheels of a truck are idle 
is a dead loss. Every pound under a capacity load is 
likewise a dead loss. Certain fundamental operating 
rules deduced from these axioms are the cardinal 



192 S. O. S. 

principles under which our whole Army Transport 
Service works. They are: 

First : Avoid an empty haul. Return loads should 
be provided for and vehicles should be parked so that 
the least possible time will be lost going to or coming 
from work, and so that as small a distance as possible 
will be travelled with no load. 

Second: Load vehicles to capacity. Do not use a 
five-ton vehicle to carry a two-ton load. Use a ve- 
hicle of appropriate tonnage. 

Third: Do not use two vehicles to do the work 
that one vehicle can do within the required time limit. 
Work one vehicle ten hours rather than two vehicles 
five hours. 

Fourth: Reduce to a minimum the time required 
in the loading and unloading operations and the extra 
time required for the necessary upkeep and supply 
operations to the vehicle. 

Fifth: Keep the vehicle in constant mechanical 
serviceability by constant inspection and care of the 
mechanism. 

As a result our trucks and cars are pooled wherever 
possible, which means that at Base Ports, Supply De- 
pots, and with the armies in the field there is always 
a central reserve of equipment instantly available. It 
has eliminated the abuse of property, useless wear and 
tear, and enables all vehicles to be used to the fullest 
possible extent. The case of passenger cars will illus- 
trate. With the exception of the highest ranking 
officers no officer has his own car. All cars are in a 
pool which is operated precisely like a taxi-cab service 
with the exception that there is no charge for riding 
and the chauffeurs get no tips. When a car is issued 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 193 

the driver is given a blank form which must be filled 
out with the name of the passenger, the car, time used, 
and the destination. At the conclusion of the trip 
the officer and civilian using this car must sign this 
slip which testifies that the "transportation was used 
for official business only." This procedure makes 
joy riding impossible. A similar taxi-cab system for 
trucks is in operation at all Depots. No Branch of 
the Service can get a truck without giving a good 
reason. 

One invaluable result of this co-operative system is 
the Army Truck Convoy which is another distinctive 
American feature. I can best explain it with a con- 
crete example. When a requisition is made on a 
Reception Park for a Divisional truck train, which is 
188 trucks, they would, in ordinary circumstances, 
proceed without cargo to their accredited destination 
which may be twenty or one hundred miles away. 
Every pound of load-carrying capacity is practically 
lost. With the Truck Convoy, however, every train 
that goes up carries freight. On land as on sea, the 
A.E.F. is constantly up against the tonnage problem. 
Supplies are piling up at the ports at the rate of tens 
of thousands of tons a day. Every freight car — 
American, French and the British wagons that we use 
— works to the fullest possible capacity. Every effort 
must be made to relieve this tonnage tension. Hence 
these trains of trucks that are constantly winding 
along the French roads have become great factors a9 
freight carriers. 

As soon as a truck train, whether five vehicles or 



194 S. O. S. 

fifty, is requisitioned the Commanding Officer at the 
Reception Park which is always at a Base Port in- 
forms the Superintendent of the Army Transport Ser- 
vice that a convoy is available. Instantly freight is 
assigned to it. Meanwhile each truck is manned and 
equipped; the cargo is then put aboard, a so-called 
Pilot who knows all the truck routes is placed in com- 
mand, the convoy gets a number by which it is known 
until it gets to its station, and the caravan moves off. 
Wherever possible the freight is consigned to the unit 
which is receiving the train. If this is impossible it 
goes to some intermediate point where the trucks are 
again loaded for a second lap of their carrying jour- 
ney. No time is lost because the Pilot wires ahead 
and a second relay of freight, with labour necessary 
to load, is ready when he arrives. Every night the 
Convoy reports its whereabouts to Tours. This is 
done to permit M.T. Headquarters to divert the train 
if necessary. So complete is the Truck Convoy Sys- 
tem that there is a special book prepared for its 
guidance. It gives maps showing routes from the sea 
to every point of importance that we occupy in France; 
it shows the location of gasolene and repair stations; 
it gives concrete directions how to pack vehicles so as 
to use every cubic inch of space. More than once I 
have encountered these trains winding along the high- 
ways bearing their burden of freight. 

Although its functions are many-sided the Recep- 
tion Park merely represents the first stage in the over- 
seas career of Mechanical Transport. Equipment is 
not only subject to a terrific wear and tear but also 



DETROIT IN FRANCE 195 

to the hazards of enemy action. It must be renewed 
and sometimes rebuilt. Hence the Highways of Sup- 
ply and Combat are punctuated with a succession of 
Depots known as Service, Overhaul, and Reconstruc- 
tion Park. Each has its specific work; together they 
keep the Motor Machine fuelled and going. 

A Service Park may be installed with combat 
troops or behind the lines. In the field it consists of 
mobile workships which are motor hospitals on wheels 
to which the lame, the halt and sometimes the decrepit 
vehicles come under their own power for repair. 
Often these Parks are set up in a wheat-field or along- 
side an orchard with little French children as inter- 
ested spectators. Such stations maintain a wrecking 
car and crew who bring in disabled and wrecked 
vehicles and arrange for evacuating them to the Over- 
haul or Reconstruction Parks for overhaul if neces- 
sary. In the Base and Intermediate Sections these 
Service Parks are installed in permanent structures. 
Whether mobile or immobile they carry a limited 
stock of spare parts, tires, and in some instances main- 
tain a limited Replacement Section of Motor Vehicles 
in order to substitute when necessary a serviceable 
motor vehicle for an unserviceable vehicle when sent 
in for repairs. 

The Overhaul Park, which is usually housed in a 
permanent structure, serves two main purposes : it re- 
pairs and overhauls motor vehicles and parts that do 
not need rebuilding and also serves as Advance Supply 
Depots for supplies, material, parts and equipment. 
Every piece of mechanical transport used by the 



196 s. o. s. 

American Expeditionary Force must be overhauled 
periodically. It is done at the Overhaul Park. 

At the Reconstruction Park you find the real casual- 
ties of transport. Here is assembled the maimed and 
battle-scarred equipment brought down by rail for 
renewal or rebuilding. You see motor-cycles that 
are merely twisted bundles of steel; passenger cars 
riddled with holes; trucks that are wire-gashed and 
shrapnel-torn. Crimsoning these vehicles is the good 
red blood of the American doughboys who stuck to 
steering-wheel until death released their grip. All 
the tragedy of war is written in these mute symbols 
of service and sacrifice. The Reconstruction Park 
is a combination of what the British call a Heavy 
Repair Shop and a Salvage Station for vehicles and 
spare parts. The work done amounts to actual manu- 
facture and it is well worth seeing. 



VIII— The Miracle Motor Man 



AT the vast Reconstruction Park — it is not far 
from Nevers — that we will now visit we touch 
American war wonder-working at its height. 
It is expressed in one of the most remarkable institu- 
tions in the whole A.E.F., in reality the throbbing in- 
carnation of the personality of an unusual man. For 
now we come to the stronghold of Colonel Harry A. 
Hegeman, Admirable Crichton of Mechanical Trans- 
port — the Miracle Motor Man of the army. The 
story of how he wrought the swift transformation of 
a thousand-acre field into a modern, well-equipped 
American automobile factory employing thousands of 
men — a vivid cross-section of Detroit — is like a tale 
out of some Industrial Arabian Nights Entertain- 
tainment. But there is a difference; the nights that 
witnessed this marvellous evolution were somewhere 
in France. Instead of being filled with music and 
magic they were packed with work and worry. No- 
where in the war have I seen a group of men to sur- 
pass the heroic unit that made this performance possi- 
ble. If our Service permitted the citation of organi- 
sations for merit the Distinguished Service Cross 
would undoubtedly hang from its standard. 

The project grew out of a plan devised at Washing- 
ton in June, 191 7, for the establishment of a huge 

197 



198 s. o. s. 

motor transport repair and spare part plant in France. 
It demanded a highly trained personnel, an immense 
amount of specialised machinery and accessories, and 
an experienced and resourceful Commanding Officer. 
This rare combination was achieved because the job 
of mobilising men and machines was put up to the 
then Major, and now Colonel, Harry A. Hegeman, 
one of the pioneer motor enthusiasts in the army. 
Curiously enough he was born at Sparta, Wisconsin. 
If ever a man was a Spartan it is Hegeman. Big 
of bone, tireless of energy, a born leader of men 
and a glutton for work (this is why they call him 
"Bull" Hegeman in the army), he was the ideal choice. 
A Mechanical Engineer by profession, he went into 
the army as Volunteer Officer in the war with Spain 
and remained there. His service ranges from the 
Philippines to Mexico. He had charge of one of the 
first motor truck trains which carried food and sup- 
plies for the Pershing Punitive Expedition that went 
after Villa. He knew a good deal about motor trans- 
port; now came the opportunity to capitalise his ex- 
perience, and he did it in memorable fashion. 

His first step was to buy the necessary machinery. 
This meant a trip throughout Industrial America, In 
purchasing his equipment he met scores of manufac- 
turers. They had hundreds of artisans coming under 
the draft. He said to them: "Save me your skilled 
men," and they did. The result was the Mechanical 
Repair Shop Unit that will be forever famous in the 
annals of the American Expeditionary Force. This 
hand-picked organisation of one hundred and eighty 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 199 

officers and four thousand men who represent exactly 
one hundred and nineteen different trades and occupa- 
tions has recorded a succession of feats without paral- 
lel in military history. 

With its arrival in France difficulties at once de- 
veloped. Although the organisation brought hun- 
dreds of carloads of machinery, spare parts and tools, 
no site had been selected for its plant. Men and ma- 
terial were dumped out at the little town in the North 
which is the Headquarters of the Intermediate Sec- 
tion. At once the Unit displayed its amazing adapta- 
bility to circumstances. Instead of waiting until a 
site was found it immediately established itself in an 
old French Caserne (a Barracks) where once Napo- 
leon's Legions had lived. In this dingy, draughty 
quadrangle including the stables, a Repair Shop was 
set up and in which efficient work was done. 

Meanwhile a factory site was located thirty miles 
from town. Now began the dual life of the Unit. 
While one section carried on at the old French Bar- 
racks the other began to convert the thousand allotted 
acres into a modern automobile factory. No army 
labour was available and these highly skilled artisans 
who are supposed to have a temperament as artistic 
and sensitive as an opera singer, unloaded freight cars 
and performed the most menial toil. At the site hun- 
dreds saw considerable trench life but it consisted of 
digging and levelling ground for roads and cement 
foundation-post excavations. Frequently they worked 
in rivers of mud during the wet season and in fierce 
sun in the dry. Because Engineers were unavailable 



2oo S. O. S. 

a detachment of these motor mechanics laid five miles 
of railway trackage, including ballasted road-beds, 
switches and turn-outs. It is typical of the character 
of the organisation that the foreman of the Railway 
Construction gang was a Chicago druggist who had 
joined as office man! 

To obtain material for concrete work and road 
building it was necessary to dredge sand from the 
bottom of an adjacent river. It was loaded on a canal 
boat, drawn eight miles by mule power, unloaded by 
hand and trucked to its destination. Fifty thousand 
tons of crushed stone and rock obtained from French 
quarries were handled in the same way. Keep in 
mind the fact that during all this construction work 
the temporary shops at the old French Barracks thirty 
miles away were turning out an enormous amount of 
repair and salvage work. Both projects were under 
Colonel Hegeman's personal supervision. Day and 
night he dashed from one to the other in a high- 
powered automobile — inspiring, organising, planning. 
Only a man of massive frame, iron constitution and 
indomitable will could have seen the job through in 
the face of the handicaps that beset him and his little 
army of willing workers. 

In less than sixty days the first immense shop — a 
fabricated steel structure made in the United States 
and shipped in sections for assembling — rose out of 
that erstwhile wheat-field. Now began the procession 
of long trains of trucks packed with machine shop 
equipment, tools and accessories that found their 
proper station at last. Before a shop was complete 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 201 

it was in operation because the equipment was in- 
stalled on the concrete floors before the last rivet was 
in the roof. Approximately six hundred tons of 
freight were unloaded each day by hand during the 
period when the shops were being equipped. The 
amount of actual physical labour alone performed by 
these men is almost beyond belief. 

It was midsummer when Colonel Hegeman broke 
out his flag at this Suburb of Detroit that had risen 
in France. He had five steel shops each averaging 
twenty-five thousand square feet and in addition a 
vast storehouse equipped with metal shelves which is 
the great American spare part depot overseas. This 
Park is organised precisely like any one of the great 
motor plants in the United States that turn out hun- 
dreds of thousands of cars a year, with the additional 
responsibility of feeding, supplying and housing its 
four thousand employes. At the apex of the pyra- 
mid or organisation is Colonel Hegeman. Under him 
is an Executive Officer who has charge of office rec- 
ords, correspondence, personnel and statistics. There 
is a Chief Quartermaster charged with finance, sub- 
sistence and supplies; a Master Mechanic, and a Gen- 
eral Foreman. Under them in turn are the various 
technical departments, each in charge of an army 
captain who in civil life was a Mechanical or Electrical 
Engineer. These various departments include Engi- 
neering, Electrical Work, Spare Parts, Wood-work- 
ing, Motor Vehicles, Tires. A separate department 
deals with Salvage Reports and Records. Thus the 



202 S. O. S. 

institution planned to repair and renew motor equip- 
ment has become a full-fledged manufacturing plant. 

Months before this Reconstruction Park, as it is 
technically known, was a going concern Colonel Hege- 
man and his Unit had become the Handy Men of the 
whole Intermediate Section. No matter what was 
wanted the Hegeman outfit could provide it. This 
is why I called him the Admirable Crichton of Me- 
chanical Transport. No sooner had he set up shop 
than he faced a shortage in raw material. A large 
quantity intended for him was caught up in the Service 
of Supply Pool and for the moment was unavailable. 
A little thing like this did not disturb Hegeman. He 
got in his car, skirmished around the country and 
bought up all kinds of metal junk, including aban- 
doned trunnion bands of big guns which he converted 
into dies, gears and steering arms. 

Once installed his factory became the repository of 
requests for every conceivable kind of article. Upon 
one occasion the Signal Corps was in urgent need of 
telegraph cross arms and appealed for relief. Within 
forty-eight hours eight thousand arms, converted out 
of undressed lumber, were on their way. A whole 
fleet of five-ton trucks was idle because certain steer- 
ing arms, unobtainable in France, had not been shipped 
from America. In five days Colonel Hegeman' s fac- 
tory turned out five hundred which immediately re- 
leased this number of trucks for the front. These 
arms had to be made with dies and hammers prac- 
tically manufactured at the plant. A third demand 
was for certain commutators which were urgently re- 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 203 

quired for ambulances. Five thousand were turned 
out in lots of five hundred every three days and as a 
result nearly a thousand ambulances were enabled to 
be put into service at once. Still another achievement 
was the design and construction of a stock-room on 
wheels for use in renewing motor equipment at the 
front. An automobile body designed of wood and 
metal and equipped with scores of compartments to 
hold spare parts and even including a tiny cubby hole 
of an office for the clerk in charge, was mounted on a 
five-ton chassis and has been of great value. The 
Tank Corps needed a training tank that would give 
the student a realistic idea of tank riding and control 
so the Hegeman Unit constructed one mounted on 
rollers that fills the bill. The Chief Quartermaster 
wanted the old-fashioned horse-drawn kitchens im- 
proved. Colonel Hegeman' s men equipped them with 
truck wheels, springs and ball-bearings which enabled 
them to stand shock and hard service, thus making 
them valuable field assets. To turn from serious war 
needs to lighter demands let me round out this cata- 
logue of emergencies met by saying that when no base- 
ball shoes were available for the six first-class teams 
in the organisation this astounding institution made 
up a hundred pairs which have proved most service- 
able. You are not astonished when I say that at the 
time I write the Reconstruction Park Nine holds the 
S.O.S. pennant. This Unit does all things well. 

Incredible as it may seem, all this spectacular per- 
formance has been a mere side issue. The regular 
task of the Reorganisation Park is to renew battered 



204 S. O. S. 

motor equipment. The smashed motor-cycles, pas- 
senger cars and trucks that come in every day emerge 
remade and shining. You can follow the progress of 
a vehicle from Casualty Section through these cheer- 
ful, humming shops until it emerges as good as new. 
During the week preceding my visit in August I, 638 
Salvage and Emergency jobs were received and 445 
of them were completed. The list includes large and 
small trucks; passenger cars; motor-cycles and side- 
cars; bicycles and animal-drawn vehicles such as Gen- 
eral Service wagons. To do salvage work it was 
necessary to cope with more than one crisis. The 
Unit found that it had to upholster cars. No multi- 
ple cutter to cut trimming was available so one was 
manufactured on the premises. The need of an ad- 
justable binder to bind leather to celluloid was met in 
the same way. The place drips with self-sufficiency. 

When you visit this institution you can scarcely 
believe — save for the presence of officers in uniform — 
that you are in an establishment built by the army 
and for the army. Those acres of steel shops with 
their high roofs, glass sides and concrete floors that 
represent the very last word in industrial construc- 
tion and which resound with the incessant rattle of 
lathe and hammer might be anywhere in America. 
Like the great Cities of Supply that we have reared 
it lends itself to indefinite expansion. This is why 
every time you come back you see some new annex 
that has risen during your absence. If you want the 
full dramatisation of American mechanical resource, 
ingenuity and enterprise abroad you will find it at 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 205 

this Reconstruction Park which, when all is said and 
done, is merely one more expression of Yankee de- 
termination to do its full part in the war. 

If overhaul and even complete reconstruction of 
wheels and bodies represented the whole Mechanical 
Transport upkeep proposition it would be an easy 
matter to keep the Service going. But every day 
thousands of spare parts from screw to transmission- 
shaft must be replaced. With standardised vehicles 
that have interchangeable parts we would simply have 
to carry a large stock of a comparatively few items. 
Such, unfortunately, is not the case. As I have al- 
ready pointed out, unpreparedness for war made it 
necessary for us to buy transport indiscriminately. 
We use many makes and many types of every make. 
Their parts are not interchangeable and we are there- 
fore compelled to keep approximately 70,000 different 
items on the shelves of our stock-rooms and more 
especially in that great Central Supply Depot which is 
a part of Colonel Hegeman's establishment up in the 
Intermediate Section. How do we do it? 

To get the answer we must fall back on that army 
mainstay — The Automatic Supply. By this I mean 
that all spare parts, whether changeable or inter- 
changeable, are renewed each month on an automatic 
basis. When a truck is sent to France a quantity of 
extra spares is shipped at the same time. If the ship- 
ment is a hundred trucks then one hundred sets of 
spares are started coincidentally on the same boat or 
some other vessel. It is precisely like the automatic 
supply of rations which is sent to France with every 



206 S. O. S. 

unit of 25,000 men. This lot of spares is renewed 
automatically at regular intervals. In case of excep- 
tional needs due, for example, to the destruction of a 
warehouse of supplies by fire a requisition is made by 
cable for a complete new stock. Washington has a 
complete file of the specific needs of every type of 
vehicle used. In addition it has the book catalogue of 
spares of every known truck and vehicle in the 
A.E.F. If a cablegram is sent asking for "Ten 
X32362A" it means that ten steering knuckles com- 
pletely assembled (right front) of a certain five-ton 
truck are desired. Thus renewal of spare parts stock, 
while involving countless items, is reduced to a com- 
prehensive and workable basis. 

Taking Colonel liegeman' s Central Depot as an 
illustration, we find that although millions of articles 
are carried in stock there is a separate metal bin for 
every item. This bin is carefully labelled and is in- 
spected every day. When a. Service Park, which car- 
ries a small stock of spares, makes a requisition on 
the Central Depot for renewal of stock the Central 
Depot in turn automatically replaces the supply by 
requisitioning on the Reception Park at the Base Port. 
In this way insurance is taken out against sudden 
shortages. 

When you go into the matter of spare parts supply 
you find that in every army certain history repeats 
itself. This is due to the fact that human nature re- 
mains the same whether the person wears a British, 
a French, an Italian or an American uniform. Most 
chauffeurs have a tendency to hoard spare parts. 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 207 

They know that, as compared with other motor car 
supplies such as tires, spare parts are scarce. With 
commendable zeal all desire to keep their equipment 
going constantly. Hence they resort to all sorts of 
subterfuges to get a surplus of spares. In order to 
prevent hoarding and to have the least possible drain 
on the supply, no spare part is renewed until the old 
part is tendered in exchange. If the part is destroyed 
and therefore cannot be returned, a complete report 
on the manner of destruction endorsed by an officer 
must be submitted. All requisitions for spare parts 
must be made out in triplicate. To prevent mistakes 
these requisitions must be vised by an officer at the 
garage wherever the truck or car happens to be 
stationed, and who is supplied with complete Vocabu- 
laries of all spare parts. He orders by numbers and 
thus the Requisition is made as mistake-proof as pos- 
sible. 

With tires the procedure is of course much simpler. 
A tire is a tire. It is pneumatic or solid. No elaborate 
stock of different types is required. Our supply in 
France is based on carefully figured out estimates of 
tire life. Into this computation go such factors as 
mileage covered, wear and tear, and the kind of serv- 
ice the vehicle is in — that is, whether it is passenger or 
freight. From these facts, based on previous expe- 
rience, is derived an average of the number of new 
tires needed by a truck, for example, every month. 
This average happens to be two tires. This number 
is multiplied by the number of trucks in France and 
the result represents the monthly tire renewal sent 



2o8 S. O. S. 

every thirty days. The tires are usually arranged 
in long racks that reach to the ceiling of the darkened 
warehouses. As little light as possible is allowed to 
shine on these treasure-troves of rubber which repre- 
sent a money value equal to a King's ransom. 

One all-important essential to motor transport oper- 
ation remains to be described. I mean gasolene which 
the British call petrol and the French designate as 
essence. To keep the army supplied with "gas" is 
a tremendous responsibility because without this life- 
giving fluid all equipment would be useless. When 
you analyse our system you find that it differs in every 
detail but one from the British. The one common 
feature in both armies is that the "juice" arrives in 
France on tank steamers. The British then reduce 
it to tin containers of four gallons each which are 
in universal use. Every British army motor vehicle 
carries a number of these cans. 

With the A.E.F., however, the bulk system is 
used, from refinery to front, which means that just 
as we have reproduced a section of Detroit in auto- 
mobile reconstruction so do we operate what amounts 
to a replica of the Standard Oil Company with fuel. 
Here the experience of the Reserve Officer again 
comes into useful play because the head of the Gaso- 
lene Department — it is under the control of the Chief 
Quartermaster — is Lieutenant Colonel Charles E. 
Dudley, who literally grew up with the world's great- 
est oil corporation and represented it in England be- 
fore we went to war. 

At La Pallice is our Port of Gasolene Entry. Here 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 209 

come the tank steamers which carry from 1,500,000 
gallons up to 3,000,000 gallons. Their cargo is 
pumped direct into huge steel storage tanks fabricated 
in America and set up by army men in France. Evi- 
dence of our war endeavour is the fact that we are 
now building one tank which alone will hold 2,700,000 
gallons. From these tanks the gasolene is pumped in 
turn to American-made and American-operated tank 
cars — the same kind of big steel drums that you see 
everywhere on our railroads at home. These cars 
have a capacity of 6,500 gallons. Every day a string 
of these cars leaves the ports for the Tank Stations 
which you find all the way up the line from the sea 
to within sound of the guns. 

At scores of points we have portable metal tanks 
for storage. They are made of assembled plates 
forged in America and hold from 7,500 to 15,000 gal- 
lons each. They had to be specially built to make the 
low clearance of the French tunnels. These portable 
tanks are side-tracked at the railway stations and 
serve as the reservoirs of supplies for the motor tank 
wagons that haul the fuel to the consumer which may 
be a garage or the headquarters of the Division in the 
field. These tank wagons, which hold as much as 
1,000 gallons each, travel in trains. This bulk system 
idea is maintained straight through the Advance Sec- 
tion. In regions where there is danger from shell fire 
or air-raids a reserve supply is maintained in an under- 
ground tank which holds on an average 1,200 gallons. 
The gasolene flows in by gravity from the tank wagon. 
Up in the field a small tank mounted on a light truck 



210 S. O. S. 

is used to supply trucks and cars that work with the 
Combat Army. Only in the rarest instances is a tin 
can used. 

The system of distribution is so simple and compre- 
hensive that Major Dudley can sit at his desk at Tours 
and know all the time just what the situation is. Be- 
fore him is a huge map on which storage stations are 
indicated by red flags. Attached to the map is a card 
brought up to date every morning and which shows 
the quantity of gasolene in France. The whereabouts 
of tank cars is followed with equal precision by means 
of a chart showing the railway routes from ports to 
the Advance Section. On it the location of every tank 
car is shown by tags. A small green tag indicates the 
loaded car while a red one is the empty car on its way 
back to the seaboard. 

You might know that any American oil enterprise 
would have the inevitable pipe-line attachment. The 
army is building a line from Havre to the centre of 
our gasolene distribution that will save exactly $10,000 
a day in tanker tonnage alone for the reason that it 
will cut down the fuel ship "Turn around" by six 
days. Here you have another conspicuous example 
of American enterprise overseas. When Colonel 
Dudley suggested this pipe-line to the French author- 
ities they said it was impossible. 

"But all things are possible with the American 
Army/' was the reply, and the army is making good. 
This undertaking means the laying down of eighty- 
two miles of pipe which must cross one of the largest 
rivers in France. The material is not only in process 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 211 

of construction but some of it, together with the 
skilled labour that will assemble it, is already in 
France. 

When you come to gasolene statistics you plunge 
once more into the arena of bewildering figures. The 
average allotment is the five gallons a month for each 
man in the A.E.F. It is estimated that the Amer- 
ican army in France, as now planned, will consume 
150,000,000 gallons of motor gasolene from July 1st, 
1918, to June 30, 1919. The Air Service alone will 
burn up 30,000,000 gallons in that time. Kerosene 
oil will be used to the extent of 7,500,000 gallons. 
The homely but effective item of castor oil for aero- 
planes will register 2,250,000 gallons while the total 
amount of motor-lubricating oils for trucks, automo- 
biles, motorcycles, tanks and aeroplanes will be 1,875,- 
000 gallons. A final reminder of the scope of the 
army motor operation is the fact that during these 
twelve months 3,000,000 gallons of cup grease will 
be needed. 

All motor supplies, whether spares, tires or gasolene, 
are easily available throughout the Sections that we 
use in France. I made a considerable trip by motor 
over the Lines of Communication and we were never 
at a loss for anything. The chauffeur or driver must 
sign a duplicate receipt for everything he gets. A 
carbon copy goes to his unit and is charged up against 
his car. Following the British precedent every road 
is marked in signs that proclaim: "Keep to the 
Right" or "Motor Transport Park Straight Ahead." 

This far-flung motor-driven machine that I have 



212 S. O. S. 

tried to take apart and which often carries the men 
and munitions upon which the fate of battle hangs, 
must be kept fit. The periodical overhaul at a Park 
will not do the job completely for the simple reason 
that day and night — for Mechnanical Transport is al- 
ways at work — collisions, abuses, or any one of the 
many hazards of travel on congested roads may impair 
mechanism and the car or truck might fail in a vital 
emergency. Hence a constant inspection of equip- 
ment is necessary. 

In command of this Supervision which really super- 
vises is Colonel Charles Hine, former Organisation 
Expert of the Harriman Railway System. He is a 
West Pointer who became a freight brakeman after 
his graduation and worked his way up to a Vice- 
Presidency. When we came to grips with Germany he 
was Assistant to the President of the Baltimore and 
Ohio Railway. Our army Motor Inspection has the 
advantage of his many years of experience with stearn^ 
electric and gasolene driven traffic. 

At best, any kind of inspection is a thankless task. 
The average man who runs a truck for a corporation 
does not like to have an eagle-eyed and heartless offi- 
cial descend upon him at unexpected moments and 
turn his vehicle inside out. He resents the process. 
The whole idea behind Colonel Hine's scheme of oper- 
ation therefore is to reverse the usual procedure and 
make inspection welcome. Thus tact is the first essen- 
tial among his inspectors, who are all technical men 
and who can take an automobile apart and assemble 
it with equal ease. Although they have the authority 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 213 

to stop any vehicle on the road and inspect it at will 
they carry a line of "selling talk" that will convince 
the chauffeur that inspection, however inconvenient, 
not only makes for personal efficiency and therefore 
promotion but is just one more step towards winning 
the war. The American soldier, intense individualist 
that he is, has taken naturally to this supervision 
which is such an all-essential feature of M.T. opera- 
tion. 

You have seen how we get machines and supplies 
to France and keep them renewed. These transport 
fleets need thousands of chauffeurs and mechanics. 
Where do they come from? 

Here you touch the human element no less interest- 
ing in the realm of motor cars than in the domain of 
big guns. Go to any big army garage and you are 
likely to see a one-time automobile salesman giving 
commands to his former boss. The little tin insignia 
on the shoulder levels all previous relations. Up the 
line you may encounter John Jones, previously a drive 
of a Fifth Avenue motor-bus in New York, running 
the star-bedecked car of a Major General while the 
rider of the motorcycle with side-car attached that 
passes him on the road and throws a cloud of dust 
in his face is probably Bill Brown who once operated 
the luxurious limousine of a millionaire steel magnate. 
So it goes in this reeking, snorting Empire of the 
Automobile. 

There are two principal sources of personnel sup- 
ply. One is the chauffeur of civil life, who simply 
changes from the Vehicle of Peace to the Wagon of 



214 S. O. S. 

War and who needs no technical teaching. The other 
is the man trained by the army for army Motor 
Service. 

Let us first take the case of the enlisted man who is 
assigned to the Motor Transport Corps. Immediately 
upon his arrival in France he is required to fill out 
what is known as an Organisation Card on which he 
not only states his personal history but indicates what 
experience he has had with motor vehicles. On the 
back of this Card are the names of thirty occupa- 
tions all connected with Motor Transport and rang- 
ing from assembler in an automobile factory up to 
expert driver and skilled mechanic. Each occupation 
is numbered. At the top of the Card is a scale of 
these numbers. If a man is a truck driver a little 
red clip is put over number n — which happens to be 
the number of that job. On every other truck driver's 
card a similar marker is placed at n. When a requi- 
sition comes in from a Division or a Park for truck 
drivers the Personnel Officer simply looks at his File 
of Men Available and can see from the number of 
red markers how many drivers are in his Human 
Pool. As soon as a man is assigned his Card goes 
into the Assigned Index. He is then caught up in 
the records of whatever unit he joins and thus con- 
tinues to be a cog in the Service Census. As in the 
British Army Service Corps, we make every effort to 
employ men as drivers and mechanics who are unfit 
for further fighting. Class B and C men, for exam- 
ple, who have been wounded but who are still fairly 
physically fit, are trained for the Motor Service. 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 215 

This brings us to the second source of Personnel 
Supply, which is the Army Motor Training School. 
Uncle Sam has set up in France as complete a School 
for Chauffeurs as you can find anywhere. It is run- 
ning Colonel Pope's famous "Get-Trained-Quick" 
course down on the Mexican border a close second 
because it turns out drivers ready to take the wheel 
in exactly two weeks' time. The School is located in 
the Intermediate Section a short distance from Colonel 
Hegeman's Reconstruction Park. The reason for this 
proximity is obvious. One object of the institution is 
to give the students an intimate knowledge of automo- 
bile manufacture. Hence each day a batch of them 
drives over in a truck to the shops at the Park, dons 
overalls and takes up station at lathe or forge. They 
study with the real thing. 

The course for drivers includes shop and field work, 
individual driving and infantry drill which is the train- 
ing in military etiquette and discipline. No student 
is permitted to get a certificate from the School of 
Instruction until he has had a working try-out on the 
road. He must prove that he can run a truck on a 
crowded highway on a dark night and not lose his 
nerve. He must also assemble engines that have been 
taken apart and make emergency repairs of mechan- 
ism purposely put out of gear. 

One necessary detail is a mastery of French road 
signs. As in the case of the American locomotive 
engineers our Motor Transport drivers are up against 
the language and traffic customs of a strange country. 
In England road traffic turns to the left instead of to 



216 S. O. S. 

the right as in the United States. In France this is 
not true but the highways are literally plastered with 
warnings which must be heeded to escape accident. 
John Jones therefore must learn that "Virage" means 
a sharp turn, that "Cassis" is a bad bump; that "Ra- 
lentir" means "Slow Up" ; that "Tenez Votre Droit" 
is "Keep to Your Right," and that "Passage a 
Niveau" is "Railway Crossing." 

The school course for motor mechanics is for six 
weeks and includes shop work of all kinds. Before 
a man graduates he must give practical demonstra- 
tions of mounting and dismounting vehicles, use of 
machine and bench tools for forging, soldering and 
brazing and he must also repair solid and pneumatic 
tires. Most of these students have worked in some kind 
of machine shop before. There is also a six weeks' 
course for officers which embraces automobile en- 
gineering, shop management, map-reading and con- 
voy running. 

It only remains to follow Mechanical Transport up 
to the firing line. The moment you get into the Zone 
of the Armies you leave the jurisdiction of the Di- 
rector of the Motor Transport Corps and come under 
the authority of the Fighting Chiefs. As in every- 
thing else, the Combat troops have first call on motor 
equipment. Each army exercises a supervision of 
Motor Operation. This means that there is a so- 
called Motor Transport Officer at Headquarters with 
each Corps and with every Division. These Officers 
are responsible for the upkeep of transport which, in 
the field, ranges from the motorcycle up to the huge 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 217 

and unwieldy gasolene-driven caterpillars that haul the 
massive howitzers. Every Division has its allotment 
of vehicles and personnel which are renewed from 
Service Parks in the Advance Section. 

Just as soon as a truck is assigned to a Division 
it is labelled with the device of that Unit which is a 
symbolic picture of some kind. I used to think that 
the French camions — as their trucks are known — held 
the record for originality of insignia with their crow- 
ing cocks and running hares but the Americans have 
surpassed them. On our trucks you can see baseball 
players at the bat; heads of pretty girls; a coiled snake 
ready to spring which recalls that famous Revolution- 
ary battle-flag flung to the breeze on many a hard- 
fought field and which bore the words : "Don't tread 
on me." On our trucks you also see stencils of the 
Bunker Hill monument, foxes and Indian heads. All 
equipment of the Air Service bears the familiar red, 
white and blue circle which gleams from the aeroplane 
wings. This matter of markings for trucks is sys- 
tematised. At Motor Transport Headquarters at 
Tours a soldier who was an artist in civil life has 
prepared a hundred different designs which are kept 
in a folder and allotted to Divisions. 

In the field the Pooling System is in full swing. 
There is always a liquid reservoir of transport ready 
for emergencies. It made possible the mobilisation 
of General Pershing's army last September and en- 
abled him to forestall the Germans and achieved the now 
historic victory of St. Mihiel. It is this kind of co- 
operative effort that makes for success in a war where 



218 S. O. S. 

Unity of Supply is just as essential as Unity of 
High Command. 

The whole close-knit American motor machine not 
only serves the Fighting Army but is impressing les- 
sons of efficiency and organisation that will reach far 
beyond the flaming battle-lines and have a definite and 
constructive effect upon the commerce of peace. Chief 
among them is the Standardisation of Vehicles. After 
a year of wrestling with every conceivable make and 
model we have settled down to a definite and orderly 
basis of supply. In passenger cars we are only buy- 
ing three well-known makes whose worth has been 
amply proved. Likewise only two long-established 
light delivery trucks will be acquired while the one- 
ton truck to be bought henceforth will have the same 
chassis as our heavy ambulance and therefore the 
parts of these two vehicles will be interchangeable. 
With one and a half and two-ton trucks one make will 
be used which will greatly simplify renewal. 

It is with three and five-ton trucks, however, that 
the real achievement in standardisation has been reg- 
istered. It finds expression in the Liberty Truck 
which will go down into history as a worthy work- 
fellow of the Liberty Motor that is carrying death and 
destruction to German trench and town. It is com- 
posed of parts made by manufacturers who are pro- 
vided with Government specifications produced by 
the Bureau of Standards at Washington. Anybody 
with a factory anywhere can get these specifications 
and make the parts. The Truck therefore becomes a 
matter of assembling. If you can standardise hon- 



THE MIRACLE MOTOR MAN 219 

esty in the production of parts you can get a hundred 
per cent vehicle and, what is equally important, you 
will solve the whole trying problem of spare parts 
supply. Every part will be interchangeable. The 
Army is not concerned with the various arguments 
for or against this kind of standardisation after the 
war. It wants action and the Liberty Truck, like all 
the rest of the Mechanical Transport, delivers the 
goods. 



IX — The Salvage of Battle 



WHEN civilisation begins to adjust itself to the 
unfamiliar sensation of a world at peace it 
will be found among other unexpected things 
that War is not all Waste. The enforced lessons of 
thrift, household economy and popular investment 
will be fully matched by the extraordinary precedent 
established in the conservation of men and material 
that can only have a beneficent and constructive effect 
on all future endeavour. 

In my book 'The Business of War" I explained the 
immense reclamation work of the British Army which 
in three years has saved to the Empire more than half 
a billion dollars out of stuff that would ordinarily 
have gone into the scrap-heap. Since that first revela- 
tion of the wonders of war rehabilitation a whole 
new attitude has developed toward what might be 
called Battle Utility. 

Despite this astonishing exhibit of rehabilitation 
wrought out of monster destruction there was a gen- 
eral, and not altogether unnatural feeling when Amer- 
ica entered the conflict that, being supplied with al- 
most unlimited men and money, her waste would be 
prodigal. The exact reverse has been true. Just as 
we fooled the Kaiser and his fellow prophets who 
declared that we would be a negligible factor in the 

220 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 221 

struggle so have we confuted the alarmists who main- 
tained that Uncle Sam would be a spendthrift. Profit- 
ing by British and French experience we have injected 
into the spirit of Combat and Supply a kindred spirit 
of saving that has almost become a gospel. Our Sal- 
vage Squads march with the advancing troops. We 
destroy and rebuild at the same time. The battlefield 
of to-day is the workshop of to-morrow. We not only 
do the ordinary reconstruction of equipment but we 
reclaim maimed human beings as well and go one step 
further. The soldiers who are temperamentally and 
otherwise unfit to fight and who would be encum- 
brances instead of aids, are tactfully deployed into 
proper and useful stations where their patriotism and 
their experience are alike capitalised. The Salvage of 
War, American Stamp, like the Business of War, 
American Brand, is a many-sided demonstration of 
Yankee originality and application. 

The story of our salvage therefore falls into two 
General Divisions: one which deals with the ordinary 
retrieving of material things, and which has become 
a common annex of every highly organised army; 
the other which affects men alone and which, so far 
as the American Expeditionary Force is concerned, is 
one of the most striking and original institutions that 
I have encountered in the war. We will briefly go 
into the material work first. All equipment Salvage 
systems operate alike and it merely becomes a mat- 
ter of pointing out result and picturesque detail. 

We were fortunate in being able to benefit by the 
British and French systems which, with the generos- 



222 S. O. S. 

ity that has marked the attitude of our Allies, were 
placed at our disposal. Since the former is fairly fa- 
miliar to most Americans I will use it for comparison. 
At the outset you find that while the method of work 
is practically the same the motive behind British and 
American reclamation is not quite identical. The 
first consideration in British salvage is to save money; 
with the United States the foremost consideration is 
to save tonnage. The financial end is useful but inci- 
dental. A cubic ton of our ship space represents more 
than so much ordinary cargo-carrying capacity in 
times of peace. With us, as I have elsewhere pointed 
out, Ships are Life. We are up against the biggest 
transport problem in all military history. Wherever 
you turn in an examination of the A.E.F. you find 
that tonnage is the supreme question. Hence our 
Salvage grew out of the realisation of the Chief 
Quartermaster that it would relieve the strain on ship- 
ping if it were not necessary to give a soldier a brand 
new blouse every time the one on his back became 
unserviceable. So, too, with shoes, belts, haversacks, 
rifles and other equipment. The Salvage Service has 
reached the point where the tonnage which would 
have been required for the renewal of all this equip- 
ment is employed for commodities such as foodstuffs 
and ammunition and which cannot be retrieved in 
large quantities. 

What is technically known as the Salvage Service 
was installed as a part of the work of the Quarter- 
master Corps. In charge is Colonel T. B. Hacker, 
a veteran regular army Quartermaster who took as 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 223 

naturally to the job as if he had been born in a junk 
shop and had dealt with old clothes instead of hard 
tack and canned beans all his life. His office is in 
the same building at Tours which houses the Chief 
Quartermaster, Major-General Harry L. Rogers. Be- 
fore him is the great map of the Domain of Reclama- 
tion, which is the usual concrete visualisation of 
American army work. The Salvage Depots are indi- 
cated by red and white flags; the location of Salvage 
Squads by red flags; permanent Army Laundries by 
black flags; Portable Laundries by blue; Portable 
Deverminising plants by green; Field Bathing and 
Sterilising establishments by yellow, and Fat Reduc- 
tion plants by black and white. From this list of sta- 
tions you get an idea of the whole comprehensive 
sweep of Salvage which not only cleans clothes but 
likewise the bodies of the fighting men. 

At the start Colonel Hacker not only had the great 
advantage of being able to adapt the British system 
but he was not forced to labour under the handicaps 
which made it impossible for Britain to even think 
of salvage until nearly a year of war had passed. The 
British had to rush an army into the field almost 
overnight. They were up against a life and death 
emergency and emergency knows no thrift. Besides, 
just as soon as the army caught its breath it regarded 
waste of food and equipment as part of the soldier's 
life. There was always the comfortable reflection 
that "The Government is rich and can afford it." 
The Tommy had to be taught to save. 

Strange as it may seem, the American soldier, al- 



224 S. O. S. 

though part of a nation of wasters, adapted himself 
at once to the Salvage idea. He was quick to con- 
serve everything from a horseshoe nail up to a big 
gun. This adaptability has been of immense help to 
the Service. 

A third aid was the obvious fact that we began to 
salvage at the top wave of reclamation development 
which finds expression in the British army in the sav- 
ing of everything in a pig except that well-known 
squeal, and with the French in the use of the threads 
dropped out of the salvage machines for the manu- 
facture of clothing. We knew that in the army rags 
are shredded; that the tops of old socks are made 
into mittens; that scraps of leather make serviceable 
shoe-laces; and that even the fat is boiled out of the 
cloths used to wrap up carcasses of beef while the 
goods itself is cut up for wash-rags. The sum of 
these trifles, to paraphrase Michael Angelo, is the per- 
fection of salvage. 

Just as soon as we had the first semblance of an 
army in France we began to impress the salvage idea. 
Material piled up but we lacked the machinery with 
which to redeem it. The first problem was to find a 
suitable initial plant, which was easier said than done. 
The Chief Quartermaster assigned Brigadier General 
John F. Madden and Colonel M. J. Henry to this task 
and they scoured middle and southern France. After 
weeks of effort they located an ideal structure, or rather 
a series of structures, in a suburb of Tours. It was a 
group of railroad shops which the French had used 
temporarily as a Supply Depot. 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 225 

Here we have set up Salvage Depot Number One 
which is the largest single institution of the kind that 
I have seen. Once more you get the kindling exam- 
ple of amazing army expansion. In January of last 
year it had a personnel of exactly ten, including offi- 
cers and enlisted men. Only one corner of a building 
was used. When I visited it last August it was oc- 
cupying 243,500 square feet of space and employing 
7,000 persons, ninety-five per cent of whom were wo- 
men who have to be hauled back and forth every day 
in motor-trucks. During February the value of the 
articles retrieved was less than $5,000. For August 
they represented a saving to the United States of 
$3,246,588 which was an increase of $1,000,000 over 
the July record. Such is the marvel of our salvage 
development that naturally fits into the larger miracle 
of what America is doing in France. 

This colossal establishment reeks with a movement 
that is only surpassed by the odour exuded from the 
tons of waste that are dumped daily at its doors. The 
eight acres of working space in and out-doors literally 
buzz. The clatter of machines cannot drown the in- 
cessant chatter of the voluble French women who 
range from short-skirted maids to wizened great- 
grandmothers and who maintain every tradition of a 
full-fledged factory including a strike and a "walk- 
out" on occasion. 

Ten .thousand army blankets go through the mill 
here every day ; it is no unusual performance to repair 
and ship 14,000 pairs of socks between morning and 
evening or renew 1,000 pairs of rubber boots within 



226 S. O. S. 

the same time. Nothing is thrown away. The gar- 
ments incapable of restoration for the American troops 
are dyed green for our prisoners of war. 

The reclamation of shoes — we turn out 3,500 pairs 
of shoes each day at this plant alone — is typical of 
the methods. The shoes are washed in big steam rol- 
ler rubs and afterwards soaked in oil vats. Mechan- 
ical processes attach soles and heels. As in the British 
Shops the unfit uppers are cut up into laces. No less 
labour-saving is the system of restoring rubber boots 
which are dried by continuous blasts of hot air after 
washing. All the torn parts are repaired by expert 
tire men. 

No detail of this Salvage plant is more picturesque 
than the Laundry which is the largest in Europe. It 
is big enough to do all the so-called "rough-dry" laun- 
dry work of a city of the size of Dayton, Ohio, and 
is as noisy as a foundry. Its steam-driven batteries 
of washing machines and wringers — each one with a 
capacity of 450 pieces — turn out 100,000 articles from 
socks to overcoats. Every day in one month they 
laundered 2,500,000 pieces. I can give you no better 
idea of the immense value of these machines than to 
say that each one of them does the work of seventy- 
five women. 

This mammoth army laundry is not without its 
element of human interest. One day last August a 
new batch of men was assigned to work in it. The 
officer in charge lined them up and said : 

"If any one here has had any laundry experience 
let him hold up his hand." 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 227 

After a silence a little yellow private raised his right 
hand and timidly stepped out of the ranks. 

"Where did you work?" asked the officer. 

"I had a laundry in San Francisco," was the reply. 

It then developed that he was a Chinaman who had 
been caught in the first draft and who is now one of 
the mainstays of the laundry. Re-classification will 
never disturb this yellow brother who is supremely 
happy on his own working heath. 

Salvage Depot Number One, immense as it is, is 
merely one link in the chain of establishments. In the 
southern part of France we have a group of four 
Depots which use more than 275,000 square feet of 
space and employ 4,000 people. These stations spe- 
cialise in shoes and are working toward a daily output 
of 10,000 pairs. A Harness Repair Shop which in- 
cludes the repair of canvas and web equipment is a 
feature. All together we have nearly twenty Salvage 
Depots large and small with nearly a million square 
feet of working space, and the number will be in- 
creased as the army expands and as the visible supply 
of material grows. 

These Salvage Depots are joined by a System of 
Communications which collects and distributes the 
material. This brings us to the really dramatic phase 
of salvage which is the wreckage of the Combat area. 
With the A.E.F. as with the other armies, there are 
two kinds of salvage — Battle and Normal. The 
former deals with the debris of actual fighting which 
may include anything from a haversack to a howitzer, 
while the latter is the refuse of the Services of Supply 



228 S. O. S. 

which means empty packing cases, tin cans, kegs and 
barrels. In both areas kitchen refuse is conserved 
and employed in many useful and profitable ways as 
you will see later on. 

The assembling of Normal Salvage is a simple mat- 
ter of gathering up the cast-ofl waste at Supply De- 
pots, workshops, training camps, barracks and billet- 
ing areas. It is with Battle Salvage that you get 
both the tragedy and trouble. Each army in the field 
has a so-called Chief of Salvage Service who is 
charged with the duty of supervising the collection of 
all material to be salvaged. Under him are Salvage 
Companies who are attached to every Division. 
These are divided in turn into Squads who follow hot 
on the heels of the fighting men. More than once 
they have thrown aside bags or shovels or leaped 
from collection carts and joined in the fighting fray. 

Field Salvage is assembled in Advance Dumps 
which are precisely what the word implies. Here 
everything is first piled up without regard to class. 
You can see acres of coats, blankets, leggings, shoes, 
some of them marked with the crimson stain which 
means that death has been near at hand. Still more 
impressive are the great Metal Dumps which are im- 
mense stretches of junk and which give the impression 
that Uncle Sam has gone into the second-hand busi- 
ness. Steel helmets with their tell-tale holes or deep 
dents made by flying shrapnel reveal the grim story 
of battle. 

These Dumps in the field or immediately behind are 
something like the Unclaimed Baggage Rooms of a 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 229 

railway company although they have a much more 
definite and tragic interest. They include field ranges, 
stoves, tools, trunks — all the trappings of camp and 
field. When a unit goes into action it must strip 
itself of all unnecessary impedimenta. Some of it is 
already war-worn. In the army if anybody is in 
doubt about the disposition of anything it goes to the 
Salvage Dump, which accounts for its heterogeneous 
quality. At one Dump I saw a banjo with scores of 
inscriptions on the drum. It had evidently belonged 
to a college boy who had beguiled his comrades with 
it on the troop transport that brought them over. 
With the curious tenacious affection that soldiers dis- 
play for trinkets they bring from home he had lugged 
it up to the Zone of Advance and only relinquished it 
when he began to play a more dangerous and difficult 
tune than he had ever twanged out on catgut strings. 
His banjo then probably became a machine gun. 

All the salvage material brought in from the field 
of battle is not damaged. When our victorious troops 
swept through the St. Mihiel salient they found ample 
evidence that they had given the Germans a real sur- 
prise. In the dug-outs of the Boche officers were 
pianos, phonographs and elaborate writing desks, all 
left intact when their late owners beat a hasty and 
precipitate retreat. This reminds me of a striking 
war contrast that was revealed one day during 
Pershing's first great offensive. A group of exultant 
doughboys assembled for a breathing spell dragged 
one of these captured pianos out in the open. A 
husky New Yorker, using an ammunition box as a 



230 s. o. s. 

stool, began to pound out American rag-time. Out 
of forty German pianos gathered up after this historic 
victory five were of French manufacture which 
showed that the barbarians had looted French houses 
and even carried away heavy plunder. 

In the Zones of the Armies the soldier is never per- 
mitted to forget that salvage is one of his first obliga- 
tions. The injunction is painted — and sometimes in 
an amusing fashion — on signs that you see every- 
where. I used to think that the British salvage re- 
minders were striking but ours go them one better. 
Once, for example, I saw a piece of German equipment 
upon which a facetious American had left this sign: 
"MADE IN GERMANY; TO BE SALVAGED 
FOR AMERICAN 

One of the frequent signs read : "IF YOU DON'T 
WANT IT— SALVAGE DOES." Another that 
greets you on all sides is: "WHAT HAVE YOU 
SALVED TO-DAY?" A characteristic sign says: 
"EACH TON SAVED HERE MEANS A TON 
SAVED IN SHIPPING." No injunction is more 
characteristic of the American spirit, no less irrepress- 
ible in war than in peace, than the one which pro- 
claims: "IF YOU ARE TOO BUSY PHONE US 
—AMERICAN SALVAGE." Other salvage signs 
have these inscriptions: "DROP IT HERE;" "THIS 
IS OUR DUMP— WHERE'S YOURS;" "PRE- 
PARE FOR WINTER— SALVAGE IT." 

It used to be the fashion to pay no attention to so- 
called "duds," which are unexploded shells. They 
are now salvaged and add considerably to the ammuni- 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 231 

tion supply. Throughout the whole area of the 
armies you can find signs which urge shell conserva- 
tion. One of the most familiar boards reads like this: 

"DON'T WASTE SHELLS. THEY ARE IN- 
TENDED FOR FRITZ, NOT FOR WASTE." 

Material for salvage, whether enemy or American, 
is removed from the Advance Dump which is always 
in the combat area and conveyed to the Army Dump 
which is located behind the lines and at Railheads. 
Here the first sorting takes place. Great care is exer- 
cised to see that ammunition is withdrawn from cloth- 
ing and belts. The property is then carefully scru- 
tinised to find out if it is fit for immediate issue which 
is often the case with captured stores. Material and 
equipment only slightly damaged is repaired at the 
Army Dump which is usually equipped with portable 
repair shops mounted on five-ton motor-trucks. 

Articles which must go to permanent Salvage De- 
pots are shipped by railway. Salvage cars are part 
of every train that goes back from Railhead. So ex- 
tensive has become the bulk of Salvage that it has its 
own Regulating Station. During one week in August 
exactly 195 cars, containing wrecked material, were 
loaded and sent out, and these did not include big guns 
and motor transport, which are a considerable item. 

Each Salvage Depot specialises in reclamations. 
Clothing, blankets, leggings, rubber and leather equip- 
ment, underwear, field ranges, helmets and trench 
tools, for instance, go to the vast plant just outside of 
Tours. Range finders, trench periscopes, watches, 
compasjses, machine guns and automatic rifles are 



232 S. O. S. 

shipped to a huge Ordnance Salvage Station up in the 
Advance Section; medical, surgical, dental, veterinary 
and X-Ray instruments go to a highly organised re- 
pair shop in Paris; motor transport, rolling kitchens, 
bicycles, motor-cycles and wagons are shipped to the 
automobile factory somewhere in the Intermediate 
Section that I described in the preceding article in 
this series. There is a special factory for the redemp- 
tion of gas masks and also one for Signal Corps 
apparatus which includes radio-vehicles and field tele- 
phone and telegraph sets. The salvaging of big guns 
is done in a complete foundry and machine shop that 
is an annex of the Ordnance Service. 

The moment that an article, whether a belt or an 
overcoat, arrives at a Salvage Station it becomes part 
of a system of records no less complete than the ma- 
chine that retrieves it. That is the reason why at the 
Tours Depots, for example, it is possible to issue every 
week a complete and itemised statement showing the 
amount of property sterilised, washed, salvaged and 
returned to circulation. It indicates the total value 
and amount of material shipped; the wages paid; the 
cost of new material used in repairs and operations 
and the relative cost of salvaging material as com- 
pared to its cost in the American, British or French 
factory. You discover that with the salvaging of a 
pair of shoes, for instance, the cost of remaking as 
compared with the present war prices for new shoes 
is less than one per cent. 

One phase of Army Salvage deserves a little chapter 
all to itself because of the great lesson to peace that 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 233 

it will convey. I mean Food Conservation, which is 
technically known as Kitchen Economics. Here we 
show the distinct influence of the British system which 
has reduced the reclamation of refuse to a science that 
is little short of remarkable. England was forced to 
adopt drastic measures, first because of the immense 
waste in the army kitchens ; and second because of the 
high price she was paying for glycerine which is one 
of the essentials in the manufacture of high explosives. 
To understand the connection between waste redemp- 
tion and high explosive let me say that animal fat 
produces soap and one of the by-products of soap- 
making is glycerine. One hundred pounds of fat pro- 
duce ten pounds of glycerine. All the British army fat 
is now bought by a group of soap manufacturers 
known as the Committee for the Purchase of Army 
Refuse. By this arrangement the Ministry of Muni- 
tions secures glycerine at $250 a ton instead of $1,250 
which was the price before she began to reclaim army 
garbage. 

We did not suffer the same waste in our army 
kitchens for the reason that, almost from the start 
of our overseas adventure, the Army Salvage System 
anticipated extravagance and put a premium on econ- 
omy by making it profitable. It introduced a com- 
plete process for the salvage of kitchen by-products 
which mean all camp waste such as meat, bones, fat 
and drippings of all kinds, stale bread and the burlap 
and wrappings from frozen beef. These products 
are rendered into fat whenever possible, or sold in the 
form in which they emerge from range or table. The 



234 s - O. s - 

price is fixed every six months. At the time I write 
the price per hundred-weight of marrow bones was 
$3.36; for first class drippings $15.36; for butcher's 
fat $7.44; for cracklings $3.54, while the quotation 
on scrap bread was $3.40 for each hundred pounds. 
The proceeds go to the Company's Messes and are 
used for luxuries. 

Wherever possible the cook is required to use up his 
waste products on the premises. When he has an 
excess over his own needs he assembles it in containers 
and it is hauled off to the Field Fat Extracting plants 
where it is reduced to fat. The material is treated in 
boiling tanks through which superheated steam is 
passed. The fat is run out, put in barrels and is pur- 
chased by the United States Government, which thus 
performs for our army the same service that the Com- 
mittee for the Purchase of Army Camp Refuse does 
for the British. 

No army cook in the A.E.F. is permitted to forget 
the fact that America expects every scrap of food to 
do its duty. In every cook-house or camp kitchen is 
a big chart which contains the following admonition 
in large letters at the top : 

"With a view of impressing all units with the im- 
portance of preserving and rendering all available fats 
the following chart is issued to show the source from 
which fats can be recovered and the methods of treat- 
ment. The preservation and treatment of all fats is 
not only necessary from an economical and cook-house 
point of view but it has become also of national im- 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 235 

portance. These fats are used for 'dubbin,' soap and 
glycerine to make explosives." 

The chart indicates precisely how recoveries of fat 
are made. First of all the cook is shown in simple 
text all the sources of fat which may be obtained from 
raw meat, the processes of cooking, waste bones, 
refuse, or the scrapings from tin cans or meat wrap- 
pings. He is also shown how to treat meat and bones 
so as to obtain the fat and he is further taught how 
to utilise it. This chart is also full of helpful hints 
for kitchen emergencies. If there is no butter, for 
example, butcher's fat may be rendered down and 
used as a substitute. By the same process so-called 
trimmings from raw meat may be rendered and used 
in baking cakes or biscuits, and so on. 

The Salvage System permits no guilty scrap of 
food to escape. Even the bakery sweepings are gath- 
ered up and sold for $2 a hundredweight while the 
swill is disposed of to French farmers who pay 50 
cents a barrel for it. Our empty tin cans, kegs and 
barrels are used as containers for the fat when it is 
shipped while the flour sacks are sent up to the front 
for sand bags. 

Most people will probably be surprised to know that 
the American Army manufacture some of the soap 
that is used in France. It is made out of the fat ren- 
dered from kitchen waste. Most of this soap is ab- 
sorbed by the field laundries which comprise an im- 
portant branch of the Salvage Service. These laun- 
dries range from a portable Motor Divisional estab- 
lishment drawn by a tractor which provides power to 



236 s. o. s. 

drive the washing machines and transportation as well, 
to a huge, permanent plant which washes the linen 
of a Base hospital with a capacity of 30,000 beds. 

The whole process of reclaiming kitchen waste has 
a much larger value than merely saving army food and 
adding cash to mess funds. Upon the cook, his helper, 
and indeed upon every man in uniform who comes in 
contact with this organised economy is impressed at 
first hand the lasting virtue of conservation. He finds 
that instead of impairing the quality of the food he 
eats this utilisation of waste improves it. The lux- 
uries that he is enabled to enjoy as a result of this 
thrift demonstrates that saving has its dividends. 
When he goes back home after the war, resumes civil- 
ian life, and goes to grips again with that most eternal 
of all evils, the High Cost of Living, which may be 
even higher than ever, he will be able to adapt himself 
readily to whatever economic emergencies may arise. 
He will be able to make his money go further than 
ever before. Here you have one of the many perma- 
nent compensations of war. 



X — New Men for Old 



RECONSTRUCTION of equipment is a ma- 
chine-line process that deals with unresponsive 
things. We can now proceed to the phase of 
salvage which touches the human being and which is 
rich with an interest — even a fascination — rarely met 
with in war. Technically and baldly known as Classi- 
fication of Personnel, it is, in reality, the agency 
through which wounded men are redeemed; made fit 
for continued work in the army and beyond that, 
equipped for the struggle of life that must come when 
the sword is sheathed. It involves a scheme of con- 
servation of man-power that is not only based on an 
economic principle but meets a military necessity a! 
the same time. 

No one need be told that the successful prosecution 
of the war demanded that every man in uniform, 
whether officer or private, should serve where he could 
serve best and where he could utilise his particular 
skill and ability. An army of misfits is a handicap. 
A trained man misplaced becomes an untrained man. 
A civil engineer, for example, assigned to an infantry 
regiment throws away years of costly training needed 
elsewhere. In the same way the technical training of 
a gas expert assigned by mistake to the Aviation sec- 
tion is totally lost to the Service. A machinist is 

237 



238 s. o. s. 

worth probably ten times more in a machine gun bat- 
talion than in a headquarters troop. 

The War Department has provided an antidote for 
all this in the vocational deployment of men through 
what is known as the Personnel System which deals 
with Casuals, the unassigned troops who come from 
the United States, and with all the temporarily and 
permanently unfit soldiers who are shunted from 
Evacuation hospitals and Convalescent camps into a 
central clearing-house which classifies them according 
to their mental and physical capabilities. It deals 
therefore with casuals and casualties and very properly 
may be called a Human Salvage Station. 

If you want to see how this extraordinary system 
operates you must come with me to the charming little 
town of Blois that overlooks the Loire. Nature must 
have had some vague intimation long ago that in this 
restful verdant nook the maimed veterans of America's 
Army of Freedom would come for sanctuary and to 
get a fresh grip on usefulness. It is a picturesque 
little community with crooked streets and with the 
usual Caserne — a quadrangle of barracks — which is 
now the nerve-centre of our army recuperation. 

To this place the able-bodied casuals are sent direct 
from their port of entry into France for assignment. 
With these so-called Class A men who are part of a 
replacement draft from the United States it is an easy 
matter of assignment to a Combat unit. The big 
problem is with the soldiers who have been wounded 
in battle or otherwise injured, who have been dis- 
charged from hospital and who present just so much 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 239 

human material to be salvaged for service. It is with 
this group that we are chiefly concerned. 

Just as soon as a man is discharged from hospital 
he must appear before a so-called Disability Board 
which grades him and recommends the Service for 
which he is suitable. Like all other armies we have 
various Classes. Class A, as I have already intimated, 
is men physically fit for combat service. Class B-i 
includes men temporarily unfit for fighting but able 
to do hard work in the meantime, while Class B-2 in- 
cludes those temporarily unfit for combat service and 
able to do only light work in the interim. Class C-i 
is composed of troops permanently unfit for combat 
service but able to do heavy work in the Services of 
Supply ; Class C-2 comprises soldiers permanently un- 
fit for combat service but able to perform light work 
in the S.O.S. Class D men are unfit for all duty 
with the American Expeditionary Force and usually 
go home honourably discharged. 

With a knowledge of these various Classes in your 
mind you can readily see how difficult is the task of 
allocating thousands of men, each one with his own 
little bit of experience back in the States, which must 
be capitalised to the fullest extent and yet not subject 
him to exertion or hardship that will impair his health 
or render his man-power unavailable for the army. 
Complicated as it may seem the whole work of classi- 
fication and reclassification is so highly organised that 
between morning and evening a man can arrive at 
this Station, undergo thorough examination, obtain 
complete equipment and be on the way to a proper and 



240 S. O. S. 

suitable station. I have seen similar systems in other 
armies but the American scheme of readjustment leads 
all the rest. 

These results are made possible by what may be 
called a Chute System. The enlisted man who may 
have lost all his baggage, who has only the clothes on 
his back, a freshly-healed wound in his side and a most 
doubtful state of mind as to what is to become of him, 
enters a door and by pursuing a continuous path 
emerges in a few hours bathed, shaved, fully equipped, 
financed, with bulging barrack-bag in his hand, and a 
little card in his pocket which assigns him to a job 
that is both useful and congenial. He never doubles 
on his tracks. So thorough is the automatic trans- 
formation that it sometimes seems like a dream to the 
men who have been through this most humane of all 
mills. Let us now see how it works. 

This Chute which is for all the world like the 
famous animal run-way in "Packingtown" in Chicago 
is located in a large building known as the Classifica- 
tion Barracks. All enlisted personnel enter in single" 
file. Each man carries in his hand the Report of the 
Disability Board that has examined him and which 
states his name, number, army unit; the nature of his 
disability and whether it existed before or after he 
entered the army ; his classification, that is whether he 
is Class B or C; and the nature of the duty recom- 
mended for him by the Board. He is now handed a 
sheet of paper — an Inspection Slip — which contains 
an itemised list of what will happen to him on his 
journey down the Chute. As these things happen they 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 241 

are checked off. First of all the man is registered, 
after which he passes on to a desk where he can take 
out War Risk Insurance and re-arrange the allowance 
and allotment for his family. If he has no insurance 
already this formal reminder is likely to equip him 
with a policy. Next comes an examination for 
disease. After physical examination is the Vocational 
classification. In front of the Examining Sergeant 
is what is known as the Index of Occupation, a large 
chart which contains the list of every job that the 
average man can hold. Each one has a number. 
The three most common occupations are Factory 
Worker which is Number 1, Farmer which is Number 
2, and Labourer which is Number 3. Each man is re- 
quired to give his life's history in terms of work. It 
includes the last firm that employed him; its address; 
the kind of * work he did; the wage he received; 
whether he exercised authority or leadership; how 
long he worked; and also a list of any other jobs or 
occupations that he may have had. Included of course 
is the usual personal information. 

All these facts are written on a large card which is 
technically known as Qualification Record. At the 
top of this card is a scale of numbers corresponding to 
every one of these major occupations on the Index 
of Occupations. Just as soon as this card is filled out 
a red marker is put over the number indicating the 
man's qualifications for work. In the case of a motor 
mechanic it would go over Number 24, which happens 
to be the index number for this particular job. When 
the cards are filed the Assignment Officer can see at 



242 S. O. S. 

a glance how many men he has available for every job. 

The Qualification Record rilled out, our man now 
continues his journey down the Chute. The next sta- 
tion is the Pay Department. Many men leave hospital 
without a cent. In order that they have some pocket 
money each man is given an advance of $7.50 on his 
pay. After financial needs are met assignment is 
made to Companies by physical qualifications. This 
means that all B-i men would be put in one group. 
Each man is given a Barrack Bag which he presents 
at a miniature Department Store where it is filled with 
clean underwear, socks, field shoes, razor, tooth brush 
and paste, and where he also gets the daily ration of 
tobacco. Adjoining is a bath-room where, with soap 
and towel provided at the Equipment Counter, he 
cleanses himself from head to foot. As a final touch 
he can, if he so desires, end this remarkable overhaul- 
ing journey by sitting down in an American barber- 
chair in a sanitary barber-shop and have his hair cut 
or his face shaved before emerging a new man. 

Now you can understand what I meant when I said 
that more than one soldier has believed that the Chute 
process was a dream. Despite its thoroughness ex- 
actly twelve hundred men have been classified in these 
Barracks in a single day. The moment that the man 
emerges he is marched off to the Barracks, put in 
charge of a Non-Commissioned Officer who issues a 
Travel Order which indicates his destination. From 
a Location Slip he knows for the first time that he is 
to go to Salvage Depot X, let us say, and that he is 
to start at 8 o'clock the next morning. In the mean- 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 243 

time he has an opportunity to stretch his legs; listen 
to a band concert composed of temporarily unfit sol- 
diers or even watch a boxing bout which is one of the 
great entertainment features every evening. In sum- 
mer a baseball game is one of the daily diversions. 

This Human Salvage Station is a gold-mine of inci- 
dent that reveals the character of the American soldier. 
Here is a typical case. When a Casual Company is 
sent off in a body the Travel Order sometimes con- 
tains a hundred names with considerable data after 
each one. Four copies must be made — all by hand. 
One night the officer in charge of the Classification 
Barracks, Lieutenant William R. Quinn, was told that 
two brothers, both wounded at the same time and 
devotedly attached to each other, were to be separated. 
The Travel Order which divorced them contained a 
hundred and fourteen names and had just been writ- 
ten and distributed. These boys did not want to be 
separated. In order to keep them together it was 
necessary to rewrite the Travel Orders which would 
mean hours of work. The Barracks clerks had 
worked from 7.45 o'clock in the morning until 10.30 
at night every day for weeks, yet when Lieutenant 
Quinn stated the facts every man volunteered to 
re-write the papers in order that these two brothers 
might remain together. This performance has been 
duplicated several times. It disclosed the fact that 
there are hundreds of groups of brothers in the 
A.E.F. Frequently you find three, even four, mem- 
bers of a family in the same unit. 

Here is another instance of character. One day 



244 S. O. S. 

a little Marine hardly up to the minimum require- 
ments of height and weight showed up for classifica- 
tion. He had been badly gassed and wounded. 
Having been a stenographer in New York, he was 
attached to the clerical force at the station. A few 
days' work, however, convinced the officer in charge 
that he could not stand the indoor labour so he was 
given light outdoor duty. One night he approached 
a. comrade and asked if he could borrow a hundred 
francs. 

"What do you want to do with this money ?" asked 
his mate. 

"I want to beat it A.W.O.L. (Absent without 
leave), shoot across France and join my outfit in the 
trenches," was his reply. 

This bantam who still had the German poison in 
his system and who was physically unfit to do a full 
day's work was willing to break the rules, subject 
himself to a Court Martial in order to get back to 
the fighting front. 

On another occasion a young boy of Austrian birth 
was making his way down the Chute. He still limped 
from a wound in his leg. At the Vocational Desk 
the officer asked him: 

"Are you an American citizen?" 

"Yes," replied the boy with pride. "A German 
bullet made me one." 

During my visit to the Station I overheard a char- 
acteristic conversation between two men who had 
just been evacuated from hospital. They were both 
of German origin. One of them asked the other: 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 245 

"How did you like shooting at your German cou- 
sins r 

Quick as a flash his companion answered: 

"They deserve all they are getting and I'd give it 
to you if you were on the other side." 

Such is the spirit of the fighting American who 
is never so badly wounded but that he wants to get 
back into the fray again. 

All the men assigned to this remarkable institution 
are not sent away at once. It becomes a sort of Rest 
Camp where men get final recuperation (pending the 
establishment of the great Recuperation Camp now 
in process of construction) and where, with the sense 
of utility which marks our whole army endeavour, 
they are made fit in every way. You find here a 
School for Stenographers, which in ten days was 
able to provide the army with fifteen capable typists. 
These men had had previous experience, to be sure, 
but many months in the army had dulled their capa- 
bility to a considerable extent. In the School, which 
is in charge of a field clerk who was a Professor in 
a Commercial College in civil life, they got back their 
old time skill. 

Other educational features include schools for 
cooks and bakers, filing clerks, horse-shoers, farriers 
and carpenters. There is also a special course of 
instruction for Non-Commissioned Officers in the art 
of handling men, office detail and incidental details, 
all of which will start them on the road to a com- 
mission. 

This system of classification has a bigger signifi- 



246 S. O. S. 

cance than merely adapting permanently or tempora- 
rily unfit men to an army job. It is preparedness for 
the future. Nothing wears out men like war and 
no war like this war. Out of this process will emerge 
tens of thousands of men better equipped for peace. 
It is making our overseas force an army of specialists. 

Full brother to the institution that I have just tried 
to describe is the great American "Blighty" which is 
now being established nearby. After four years of 
war the average American need scarcely be told that 
Blighty means England for the British Tommy. 
When one of them gets a "blighty" it means that it 
is a sufficient wound to take him back home. Amer- 
ica will not be able to send her wounded men home 
so she will bring the comforts of home to France. 

When the first American Casualty Reports were 
flashed by cable from France to the United States 
there leaped from many American hearts and homes 
the swift and tremulous question: 

"What is the army doing for my wounded boy?" 

The huge Recuperation Camp on the Loire is the 
army's answer to this question. Amid wooded 
groves and with every convenience that makes life 
worth redeeming is rising this sanctuary where the 
doughboy can come from Evacuation Camp and 
travel gratefully back to strength. The only detail 
missing will be the loving presence of his family. It 
will be a sort of Army Elysian Field on Earth. Aside 
from the human aspect this immense project is a 
sound military and economic enterprise for the rea- 
son that the average cost in time, effort and sub- 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 247 

sistence of each individual evacuation from a hospital 
camp to this haven of rest and recovery is much less 
than the similar cost of individual replacement from 
the United States. It means New Men For Old 
without drawing on the reserves at home. 

So far I have dealt with the classification of en- 
listed men. Now we come to the kindred allotment 
of officers which brings us to the threshold of the 
Military Confessional, in many respects the most 
unique and original human institution in the whole 
A.E.F. Save to those who have found hope, faith, 
and a new life within its sympathetic walls it is 
scarcely known. Yet this establishment stands at the 
cross-roads of the sometimes tangled highway of 
army life and points the path to fresh careers. It is 
a living rebuke to the old theory that War is a brutal 
and unsympathetic thing. I know of no activity 
which more completely or unalterably reflects the 
ideals of the American Army. 

With officers, as with men, square pegs are often 
stuck into the round holes. In other words the wrong 
man is put on the job and makes a hash of it. In 
most other armies the man found to be temperamen- 
tally unfit to lead troops or even for some desk task 
is often sent home. He feels that he is disgraced 
and he frequently spends the rest of his life eating 
out his heart in remorse and regret. He makes him- 
self a marked man and his usefulness to society, in 
most instances, ends. With the A.E.F. such a man 
is given a chance to make good. Regeneration is put 
squarely up to him. The story of how this oppor- 



248 S. O. S. 

tunity is offered lifts the routine and the humdrum 
of so-called Reclassification to the realm of a real 
romance. It is genuine character building. 

The first question that naturally arises is: How 
are these officers segregated? The process is very 
simple. As soon as it became apparent that officers 
were misplaced in the various Staff Corps and De- 
partments (such misplacement was inevitable in the 
hasty mobilisation of a huge army), a Personnel Bu- 
reau was established at the Headquarters of the 
Services of Supply at Tours to deal with all problems 
relating to officers physically or otherwise unfit for 
front-line work and to give them a chance elsewhere. 
It was placed in charge of a Deputy Chief of Staff 
who by the very circumstances of his birth, his whole 
army experience and his outlook on life was an in- 
spired choice. This man is Lieutenant-Colonel M. R. 
Wainer, whose story is as picturesque as his post. He 
was born in Russia and was brought to America as 
a child by his immigrant father who settled in the 
Middle West. The boy yearned to be a soldier; it 
was impossible for him to go to West Point so he 
enlisted as a private and worked his way up to a 
commission. He has journeyed over the rough places 
himself; he knows and understands men; he was 
therefore eminently qualified to assume the role of 
Father Confessor to the Army, for such he is. 

It was not long before the disciples gathered at 
his door. They came because a certain memorandum 
was sent to all Bureau Chiefs. This document so 
completely dramatised the spirit of fair play and a 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 249 

square deal in the army that I am reproducing it in 
full. Here it is: — 

"If there is any officer in your department, in any 
grade whatsoever, whom you regard as incompetent 
that officer will upon your recommendation be sent 
to the Reclassification Station. You can safely count 
on the fact that unless it be by accident he will not be 
returned to your department. 

"It is not necessary in recommending this officer 
for reclassification that you state any reasons for 
desiring to get rid of him, but in order to assist in 
the reclassification of the officer, and to better place 
him in some other field where his services may be 
more useful to the United States, every such case 
should be accompanied by a frank statement of the 
officer's qualifications and disqualifications so far as 
they have been developed while serving in your de- 
partment. 

"It should be understood that the policy of the 
Commanding General, S. O. S., is to make a read- 
justment of personnel so as to get the maximum ad- 
vantage out of every man's service. It frequently hap- 
pens that a man who is totally unqualified for one 
class of work is well qualified for another, and how- 
ever worthless an officer may appear to be from your 
viewpoint it may be that his services can be used to 
some advantage in another field." 

This memorandum is the basis for the adjustment 
of all misfit officers and it has been the mainspring of 
some real human miracle working. 

Likewise a General Order authorises Division, 
Corps and Army Commanders to relieve such officers 
as are considered unqualified for combat duty of their 
commands, and send them back for Reclassification. 



250 S. O. S. 

All officers ordered for this reclassification are first 
ordered to the Human Salvage Station which I de- 
scribed in a previous section of this article. The 
papers giving the available data as to their qualifica- 
tions, civil occupation and the reason for their relief 
are then sent to the Commanding General of the 
Services of Supply. Upon receipt of these papers 
the Personnel Bureau at Tours orders the officers to 
report there. Upon arrival they are required to fill 
out an Officers Qualification Card, which is somewhat 
similar to the Qualification Record filled out by the 
enlisted man although it does not include the voca- 
tional list. It contains the usual personal informa- 
tion. The officer himself indicates the Department 
or Branch of the Service in which he thinks he would 
be most valuable and his qualifications for the work. 
He must also state what educational advantages he 
has enjoyed; what foreign languages he can speak, 
and state any previous army service. 

Every officer who comes to Tours for reclassifica- 
tion has an interview with Colonel Wainer which is, 
in many respects, the most important detail. Before 
he enters the Confessional the Colonel has read the 
man's record. He can therefore talk to him with 
knowledge and authority. More than one officer has 
entered that sanctuary cocky, even defiant, and pro- 
testing against what he regards as an indignity. Al- 
ways he emerges with a smile on his face and with 
hope in his heart. This big-souled Deputy Chief of 
Staff who rose from the ranks knows how to place 
men. He has before him an up-to-date list of needs 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 251 

in the Services of Supply which grow so fast that 
there is always a demand for officers. He is there- 
fore able to assign men to jobs where they are sorely 
wanted and where the welcome, first born of need, is 
a stimulus. The demand for officers, I might add, 
usually exceeds the supply. No matter what highly 
specialised experience is represented there is invari- 
ably a place to use it. 

A complete card record is kept of every officer re- 
classified for incompetency or temperamental unfit- 
ness. For the purposes of army records he is known 
as a 'Thrown Back" or a "T.B." for short. Like 
that other and more deadly "T.B."— the Great White 
Plague — he can usually be cured. This card system 
is itself a marvel of completeness and efficiency. A 
card with a green flag in the centre, for example, 
signifies an officer reclassified for physical reasons. 
A card with a blue flag in the upper right-hand cor- 
ner shows that it is the brief biography of a "T.B." 
sent back from the front for temperamental reasons. 

All reclassified officers are placed in four divisions. 
Class 1 is composed of those who, while rendering 
satisfactory service, have requested their own trans- 
fer for personal reasons. Class 2 are Misfits who 
have failed to render efficient service and who are 
not sufficiently inefficient to justify an Elimination 1 
Board. Class 3 includes all officers for whom an '• 
Elimination Board has recommended a transfer to 
another branch of the Service. Class 4 is officers 
whose discharge has been recommended by the Elimi- 



252 s. o. s. 

nation Board but who are being given another chance 
to qualify somewhere in the army. 

Since I have referred to Elimination Boards it may 
be well to explain their function, which I will do with 
a concrete example. If the reclassification of an offi- 
cer sent back from the combat area for inefficiency 
indicates that he holds too high a rank for his new 
post in the Services of Supply he is ordered before an 
Elimination Board with a view to his demotion to a 
grade more nearly in accord with his capability or 
to conform with his discharge if a dismissal is recom- 
mended. Thus the Board's job is to eliminate or to 
appraise men and ranks. 

Some officers have appeared several times before 
Elimination Boards. This procedure is in line with 
the policy outlined at General Headquarters, which is 
that no officer shall be discharged from the service of 
the United States except for misconduct or some simi- 
lar reasons and until he shall have been given every 
possible opportunity to prove his fitness in any 
capacity. No man was ever dismissed from the 
A.E.F. without good and sufficient reasons and only 
after he had had every chance to redeem himself by 
service. In this spirit of justice you find the incarna- 
tion of the character of the grave-eyed man who is 
the Commander-in-Chief of our Armies abroad. 

Reclassification often develops the fact that men 
fail in the army merely because they are put on a 
wrong task. If it is apparent that an Aviation officer 
lacks the fundamental qualities required in this branch 
of the Service, and his training, civil occupation and 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 



253 



personality fit him for duty with the Quartermaster 
Corps he is assigned to that immense domain. If he 
proves his adaptability after a certain time, and upon 
receipt of a recommendation from his superior officer 
to that effect, General Headquarters vacates his Com- 
mission in the Aviation section and re-commissions 
him in the Quartermaster Corps. 

Wherever a man is reclassified for inefficiency a 
confidential letter is sent to the Section Commander, 
or the Department to whom he reports, explaining 
why he is assigned. His case is quietly and tactfully 
"followed up" without the slightest bruise to his 
pride. The only men who have ever failed to qualify 
under this humane, sympathetic and considerate 
process are those professional and confirmed rotters 
of whom the army is well rid and who have only 
themselves to blame for their downfall. 

In the case of officers who are reclassified for 
physical disability due consideration is given to their 
condition as shown by the Medical Report. Their 
assignment depends upon their qualifications and the 
duties they are able to perform. After a certain 
specified time these officers may ask for a re-examina- 
tion. If they are found to be physically restored 
they are placed on a list as available "for return to 
combat." They go back to the fighting job as soon 
as an officer becomes available to replace them on 
their present assignment. 

It only remains for me to disclose a few intimate 
chapters on the Roll of Salvaged Honour recorded 
by the reclassification of officers who have been given 



254 S. O. S. 

that second chance and who have found both glory 
and compensation in their remaking. 

One day a southern Colonel entered the Army Con- 
fessional. He had arrived in France in charge of 
a splendid battalion. In the training camp he gave 
every evidence of skill and tact. The moment he 
got his troops up in the combat area he displayed a 
temper and inability to handle men in an emergency 
that not only made him conspicuous but led to his 
being ordered back for reclassification. 

This man was proud and sensitive; he had been in 
the National Guard for twenty years ; all this time he 
had dreamed of the hour when he would lead troops 
in actual battle. When that great moment arrived he 
was found to be temperamentally incapable and no 
one realised it more than he did. All that he could 
see ahead of him were years of poignant regret and 
bitterness. Instead of rebuke he met with kindness; 
where he had expected reproach he found a helping 
hand. 

"What would you like to do?" asked Colonel 
Wainer. 

"I want to do a man's job somewhere in France, ,, 
was the reply. 

He got his chance. At a certain port much used 
by the American Expeditionary Force you will find 
this Colonel erect, buoyant, full of pride in his task 
and likewise a pride to the uniform he wears. He 
has found the social field in which his personality 
has full swing. He is merely one of many splendid 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 255 

men who have found themselves after devious army 
wandering. 

The Army Confessional knows neither caste, creed 
nor colour. Not so very long ago a negro officer 
was sent back from the front as unsuited for combat 
work. He was so indignant that he had done that 
most rare of all army things — sent in his resignation. 
Colonel Wainer knew that the man had character and 
that it only needed to be pricked into life so he asked 
him point-blank: 

"Are you still loyal to your country and your flag?" 
"Yes," responded the man, "of course I am." 
"Then you should be willing to serve it in the best 
way that you know how, ,, retorted his questioner. 

To-day that officer who was willing to quit the 
service in a fit of pique and face rebuff at home is 
rendering admirable service with a Stevedore regi- 
ment where his men almost idolise him and where he 
is a credit to his race and his cause. 

These heart-to-heart experiences are not without 
their element of humour as the case of another negro 
officer will show. When Colonel Wainer asked him : 
"What is your trouble?" he immediately replied: 
"Well, boss, it's this way." His first words of 
course showed that he had failed in the first principles 
of military requirements and that he was still a waiter 
on a Pullman dining car. When the proposition of 
serving his country was put squarely up to him he 
was ready and willing to go before an Elimination 
Board and serve in the ranks as a private soldier. He 
has been in the thick of the fray ever since. 



256 s. o. s. 

In this Confessional human nature stands uncom- 
promisingly revealed. Men blame every one for their 
errors save the right person who usually is themselves; 
Frequently they protest that it was not inefficiency 
that brought them back from the front but because 
they happened to be in a regiment composed of men 
from various States and that the predominating offi- 
cers in the unit want subordinates from their own 
Commonwealths under them. These cases are in- 
variably without foundation because investigation 
proves that the officer himself is to blame and that he 
has not given the proper support and loyalty to his 
Commander. Such men are assigned to duty in the 
Services of Supply where, relieved from the friction 
engendered by sensitive State pride, they have given 
excellent accounts of themselves. 

Again and again there are examples of men merely 
misplaced. A young man of twenty-five who had 
been a successful commercial painter found himself 
in a Field Battery and was sent to a school for in- 
struction and training in the intricate and mathe- 
matical problems of artillery. Of course the work 
was not congenial and he was sent to* the rear for 
classification. His proper station was Camouflage, to 
which he was assigned and where his special qualifi- 
cations have already won him the highest praise. It 
is a typical illustration of the work that is being done 
daily in making the army more keenly fit to do its 
great task. 

When you sum up the whole process of reclassifica- 
tion you find that, as with so many other phases of 



NEW MEN FOR OLD 257 

our army organisation, it is building for peace as 
well as for war. America, like England and France, 
will face a dearth of skilled men in industry when 
the world no more sees red. Competition, which 
was merely part of the orderly development of a 
people before the war, will be a bitter battle for eco- 
nomic existence after the war. The struggle to live 
will be comparable to the struggle for freedom to-day. 
The nation that can swiftly mobilise both its trained 
workers and its trained leaders will have a flying 
start on all its rivals. The race toward rehabilitation 
will be to the swiftest. In the classification and re- 
classification of officers and men is one guarantee 
that the United States will be able to segregate quickly 
an army of specialists which will be a tremendous 
factor in all the arts and crafts and which will enable 
us to maintain our world-wide industrial supremacy 
born of the needs of conflict. 

Meanwhile down in that little room at Tours every 
day men are getting a rebirth of character, courage 
and what is equally important — self-respect. We are 
not only saving Human Tonnage but Human Careers 
as well. 

It is the Highest Salvage. 



XI — The Marvels of Army Organisation 

IF you should arrive in France and want to know 
at once the whereabouts of your son, brother or 
friend from your home town who is with an 
American unit somewhere in the field, all that you 
have to do is to get in touch with the Central Records 
Office of the A.E.F. and you can find out as quickly 
as the telegraph can transmit your inquiry and flash 
back an immediate answer. This personal intelli- 
gence system is just one more detail in the many-sided 
army organisation that is a marvel of efficient co- 
ordination. 

We have been journeying through the major and 
therefore spectacular Services of Supply. Signifi- 
cant as are their activities, they only compromise a 
comparatively few sections of that vast and throb- 
bing domain which feeds, equips, and unifies the over- 
seas forces. We can now take up some of the other 
and no less vital agencies which form what may be 
called the subsidiary corporations of the American 
Business of War, Unlimited. They range from a 
life insurance company to the largest real estate oper- 
ating office in the world. Included among them is a 
School for Citizenship, a complete Renting and Claim 
agency, a scientific Forestry Service, a job-printing 
plant, even a full-fledged newspaper of, by, and for 

258 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 259 

the army. Each in its way reveals a distinct phase 
of highly developed administration that is not only 
essential to some phases of the conduct of the conflict 
and the mental or physical upkeep of the men, but 
conveys a useful and constructive lesson for peace. 

The Central Records Office is typical. We put 
the Card Index on the Commercial Efficiency Map. 
Hence no one will be surprised to learn that we have 
probably the largest one ever created and comprising, 
when you consider all ranks, civilians, prisoners of 
war, and other individuals connected with our over- 
seas forces, more than two million names. This 
monster and up-to-the-hour directory makes it pos- 
sible to locate every person who draws pay or prop- 
erty from the army and to know at a glance his or 
her past and present. 

You find this huge institution housed in an im- 
mense structure in a pleasant town well up in the 
Intermediate Section. Here, hundreds of "Waacs," 
working as clerks and stenographers, perform 
the same admirable service for the American Army 
that they do for the British Expeditionary Force in 
that they release fit and semi-fit men for the front or 
for service in the Supply and Transport branches. 
At first sight the establishment makes you think of 
a Census Office, and such it really is. You hear the 
machine-gun-like rattle of batteries of typewriters; 
you see apparently unending vistas of Card Catalogue 
Cabinets; there is the charged atmosphere of swift 
and orderly action. All these Cabinets are in groups 
by Army Corps, Divisions, and smaller organisations. 



260 S. O. S. 

Each Cabinet bears a card which indicates the body 
whose records it contains. 

Central Records, as it is more commonly known, 
is technically charged with "maintaining accurate and 
complete records of the entire personnel of the Ameri- 
can Expeditionary Forces, civilians attached thereto, 
all the American prisoners of war held by enemy 
forces and all enemy prisoners of war held by our 
forces. ,, This bald and more or less official outline 
of responsibilities covers a multitude of other details 
that extend from the entry of the army individual into 
this world to the final record of his passing into the 
next. 

To accomplish all this the office is divided into vari- 
ous Divisions. Some of these Divisions are so large 
that they in turn are composed of three or four sec- 
tions. Each has its separate and distinct function. 
The Mail, Record and Correspondence Divisions will 
illustrate. It not only opens, distributes, and files 
army correspondence for record, but conducts the 
courier service which daily conveys official documents 
from one Service to another. Likewise it handles, 
collects and replies to inquiries about the overseas 
forces. 

The Card Index of the army personnel is an il- 
luminating example of how Central Records works. 
Its main object is to provide what is known as a 
Master Card for every person connected with the 
A.E.F. It is no simple task. New units are arriving 
in France every day — indeed every hour. They come 
from every part of the United States. Men are con- 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 261 

stantly dying from enemy action, disease or accident; 
forces are being shifted from one point to another, 
and sometimes this movement involves tens of thou- 
sands of men whose orders may come almost without 
notice. On top of this is the fact that staffs are re- 
organised ; officers and enlisted men are shunted from 
Service to Service: there is incessant evolution. 
This eternal panorama of change must be focussed 
and every change recorded in the Army Directory. 
Now you can see just what a job it is to make the 
army index live and up to date. 

It is only possible because every unit that comes 
overseas begins to contribute to the Central Records 
before it embarks. Just as soon as an organisation 
is ordered to France it is required to fill out a card 
for every member. At every port in France are so- 
called Statistical Officers who compare these cards 
with the passenger list of the organisation. If there 
is any discrepancy the organisation is immediately 
called upon to fill up the gaps. This preliminary 
work, I might say, is in charge of what is known as 
the Initial Information and Army Serial Number 
Division of Central Records. 

Now we can proceed to the second stage of the 
Census, which deals with the army serial numbers. 
There is a serial number for every man in the army. 
The complete sequence of these numbers is on the 
books of Central Records. Let us assume that John 
Jones is number 1,000,000. As soon as he reaches 
France and the records of his unit pass through their 
proper channel his name is written alongside the 



262 S. O. S. 

number 1,000,000 in the army register. Henceforth 
in all records of John Jones overseas that number will 
accompany him even to the identity disc that he wears 
attached to a string around his neck. 

This brings us to the preparation of the Master 
Card which is the compact and concrete record of the 
soldier. This card is eight inches long and five inches 
wide. It contains the full name, army serial number, 
rank, organisation, complete home address; name, re- 
lationship and address of party to be notified in case 
of emergency; date of birth; place and date of en- 
listment or commission, date of arrival in Europe; 
location in France or elsewhere abroad; record of 
all transfers and changes which includes every promo- 
tion, capture, absence with or without leave or fur- 
lough. It also states the individual's occupation be- 
fore the war. In the lower right-hand corner is a 
blank square that has a grim and tragic significance. 
It is the spot left for the photograph, diagram, or 
description of the place of burial. 

On the back of the card and under the head of Hos- 
pital Record is space for the record of every wound, 
illness, or physical incapacity of any kind. It shows 
the date of the casualty, the hospital where the soldier 
was sent, the nature of the illness or wound ; whether 
it was slight or serious and the hour and date when 
the trooper was discharged or died. When you ex- 
amine one of these Master Cards there is precious 
little of vital importance about the soldier that you 
do not know. So complete is this Card Index that 
if you asked to see the record of the Commander-in- 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 263 

Chief you would discover that it followed the same 
form as the card of Bill Brown, buck private in the 
X Division. 

With the machinery at the disposal of Central Rec- 
ords it is comparatively easy to make out the original 
Master Card. The problem is to keep this card 
"live/' as they say in business. This is achieved 
through the co-bperation of every unit in the A.E.F. 
which is required to submit all casualties and changes 
in the status of its personnel to Central Records at 
regular intervals. From these reports the various 
changes are made on the Master Card. 

Two Divisions of Central Records have special and 
poignant interest. One relates to Casualties which I 
shall describe later on in this book in connection 
with Graves Registration. The other is that section 
which deals with American prisoners of war held by 
enemy forces. As is the case with every other detail 
of the war, whether it involves the capture of a town 
or the record and treatment of prisoners, the Allies 
displayed an infinitely larger spirit of justice and 
fair-play toward their enemies than the enemies 
showed toward them. The German military authori- 
ties took a particular delight in intensifying the sus- 
pense of relatives and friends over the fate of those 
reported missing. Only those who have been through 
this long-drawn anguish can realise what it means 
to be kept in the dark concerning the whereabouts of 
loved ones. The phrase "wounded and missing/' 
has whitened more hairs and racked more souls than 
all the definite news of death in action combined. 



264 S. O. S. 

Under the international agreement the ordinary 
method of conveying information about prisoners of 
war is through the Red Cross. Central Records com- 
piled the names of every German prisoner in our 
hands and they were sent expeditiously to the German 
Government by way of the accredited channels. The 
system of the American Business of War operates 
alike for friend and foe. Hence you find a Master 
Card for every Boche in our hands. The German 
has not been so considerate of our own men. Their 
much-vaunted efficiency has no heart. 

The deeper you probe into the Business of War 
the more you realise its intimate parallel with every 
day commerce. War these days is simply colossal 
merchandising with men. Instead of converting raw 
steel into rails or girders it transforms the raw human 
being into a finished fighting man. To maintain 
its output every industrial concern must renew its 
machinery regularly to meet the wear and tear of 
incessant production. In the same way the army 
must renew its fighting machine, which is the soldier. 
Every day its ranks are thinned by enemy action, 
accident, disease — any one of the many perils that 
beset a huge force in the field. This army renewal 
is technically known as Replacement of Men, and it 
discloses another phase of scientific military organisa- 
tion well worth explaining. 

All new men for the American Expeditionary Force 
whether they are combat troops or in the Services of 
Supply mainly come from the same source, which is 
the draft. Likewise the great majority get their pre- 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 265 

liminary training at home. The bulk are attached to 
some organised unit before setting sail for France. 
Between eight and ten men left the shores of America 
for the ports of freedom every minute. This steady 
stream of khaki must not only have a destination but 
it must meet some definite need, be assigned to some 
specific place, and take its orderly place in the fabric of 
our fighting force. How is this done ? 

Study the Replacement process and you soon find 
out. You discover that with men as with supplies 
we depend on what amounts to an automatic supply, 
which means that gaps in the ranks are regularly filled 
and that there is always a reserve to draw upon. Re- 
placement deals with men for the Front and the Rear. 
Since this series of articles is concerned solely with 
the Services of Supply we will stick as far as possible 
to our bailiwick. It will serve to explain the system, 
first because it is a Self -Contained Empire and second 
because the troops comprise more than one-third of 
our overseas army. 

Perhaps I can best convey the scheme of Replace- 
ment by saying that it is like banking. If you have 
a bank account and keep on drawing checks against 
it you exhaust the purchasing value o f your checks 
if you do not keep on depositing in the bank. The 
army in France is in the same position as the indi- 
vidual. It is constantly drawing on its human de- 
posits in America, which are the training camps. 
Since the A.E.F. makes out a check every month in 
the shape of a big Replacement Order it follows that 
Uncle Sam in his turn must have the available trained 



266 S. O. S. 

men ready. Through the draft he keeps on deposit- 
ing men in the human bank, which is the army at 
home. Hence the army must keep books on men just 
as it keeps books on everything else. 

All this means that General Headquarters in France 
must know exactly how many men are available in 
America all the time. Hence you can see up there 
a blue chart which shows every Division in the Amer- 
ican Army at home and abroad. The units in Amer- 
ica are indicated by a white square. The moment 
that this unit arrives in Europe a smaller square is 
placed inside. A glance at this chart shows what 
troops are at home and what are overseas. The 
process which registers these results is packed with 
detail and registers high tribute to our organising 
genius. 

Let us begin at the beginning, which means that 
the machinery of supplying men for France starts 
with the Section of the General Staff known as Gi 
whose functions I described in a previous chapter and 
which is the Great Army Provider. Every requisi- 
tion for men, like every requisition for food, clothing, 
engineering material or equipment, must pass across 
its desks. Although the Gi at General Headquarters 
is the senior Section and has general authority in 
requisitioning men, the G4 of the Services of Supply 
also has a responsible task because every man that 
sets his foot on French soil comes under its jurisdic- 
tion first. Gi at G.H.O. gets him to France and G4 
of the S.O.S. equips, transports him to his training 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 267 

area and gets him up to the front where he comes 
under the authority of G.H.Q. 

In order to get at the very first step in Human 
Supply we will be obliged to step out of the A.E.F. 
for a moment. It takes us to a charming little town 
in France which will be a post-war shrine for the 
reason that in a simple structure on a side street sits 
the Master Strategist, Marshal Foch, the Hammer of 
the Hun. With him is vested the Supreme Unity 
of Command of the Allied armies and especially those 
righting in France. He moves the pawns on the 
checker-board of life and death because all major 
orders for troop movements emanate from him. It 
is Foch who determines what men are needed for 
offensives and this in turn determines the number of 
men required to equip, supply and transport them. 
Thus the Human Demand so far as the American 
Expeditionary Force is concerned, really begins with 
Foch in conjunction with General Pershing. 

Let us say for the sake of illustration that 350,000 
men comprise the monthly shipment to France. This 
number includes two separate and distinct groups. 
One is the regular, normal addition to the army; the 
other includes the men needed to renew losses at the 
front or in the rear and is the so-called Replacement 
force. 

This again brings us bang up against the supreme 
problem of the A.E.F. — Tonnage — which applies to 
men no less than it applies to material. Every unit 
in France wants all the men it can get. Normal in- 
crease and Replacement therefore become matters of 



268 S. O. S. 

careful tonnage allocation and Gi at G.H.Q. does 
the allocating. First of all both Front and Rear file 
their requisitions of human needs. If the army has 
been in a big offensive its demands are greater than 
usual because it has had casualties. In the same way 
if vast new construction projects in the Base or Inter- 
mediate Sections have been launched and must be 
pushed through to early completion there is an ab- 
normal requirement for additional Engineering units. 
If the demand for men at the front has made it neces- 
sary to send men from the S.O.S. up into the fighting 
line they must also be replaced. The emergencies 
that beat about Supply and Replacement are many 
and complicated. Gi sifts out all these needs and 
does precisely what the Chief Quartermaster does 
with regard to his tonnage allotment. It makes up 
a Priority Schedule which indicates the urgency of 
the human shipment. This Priority Schedule is 
based on a fixed arrangement called "Schedule of 
Priority of Shipments" and which is the Convoy 
Bible. It is divided into Phases. Each Phase in- 
cludes a certain number of troops for the Combat 
Army and a certain number for the Services of Sup- 
ply. In Priority, as in everything else, you realise 
how all-important the S.O.S. is because there can be 
no fighting at the front without this unspectacular 
and bloodless fighting in the rear. 

One reason why an up-to-the-hour check can be 
kept on Replacements is that for every unit in France 
there is a chart which shows the strength of the or- 
ganisation. Let me illustrate with the case of a Di- 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 269 

vision. On the left-hand side is an itemised list of 
its various kinds of units. Alongside is a column for 
"Authorised Strength" and another entitled "Present 
for Duty." Extending from each unit in the Division 
such as Headquarters, Infantry, Artillery, Supply, 
Engineer and Sanitary Trains and so on down the 
line is a horizontal black bar which indicates a scale 
of strength up to 100 per cent. If the bar radiating 
from Infantry, for instance, stops under the number 
90 it means that the Infantry in the Division is 90 
per cent, of Authorised Strength. At the bottom of 
the sheet is a square which indicates "Replacements 
Required." If the Division is at full strength this 
square remains white; if 10 per cent Replacement is 
necessary it is so indicated. The sum of these charts 
in every branch of the Service makes it possible to 
know the strength from day to day and the Replace- 
ments required. 

When all requisitions for Replacements are in, Gi 
sends a blanket cable to Washington specifying needs. 
The various kinds of casual troops are ordered by 
letter, which means that if Gi cabled X 15000 it would 
mean that 15,000 Engineers were required for Re- 
placement. In the same way Y may mean Medical 
Corps, Z Ordnance, and so on. I am using hypothet- 
ical letters. These troops come over unassigned. This 
is why they are known as casuals. Most of them go 
to the great Clearing-house on the banks of the Loire 
that I described in the preceding chapter. 

Just as soon as troops are at sea or "floated," as 
the army phrase goes, they are caught up in a cease- 



270 s. o. s. 

less system of scrutiny. The War Department ad- 
vises Gi by cable the precise number and class of reg- 
ular organisations and the total number of casuals 
embarked and on the way. The whole process now 
becomes visualised. If the convoy includes A Divi- 
sion which is intended for B army in the field there 
is already a blank square for this Division on the B 
Army Chart of Organisation which hangs at General 
Headquarters. So long as this Division is in America 
this space is white. The moment it starts for France 
half of the square is filled in with red. As soon as the 
unit arrives in France the square becomes all red. 
Meanwhile Gi has advised the armies in the field or 
the Services of Supply just what troops are on the 
way in the same way that the Quartermaster Corps 
or the Engineering or Ordnance Services are advised 
of the shipment of needed supplies. This complete 
system of advice makes for an efficient use of man- 
power in the army. 

The remarkable document known as the Daily State 
obtains with human as with material needs. Every 
day there is placed on the desk of the Commander-in- 
Chief at G.H.Q. and on the desk of the Commanding 
General of the Services of Supply at Tours a type- 
written sheet which shows the total personnel — Com- 
batant and Services of Supply — in France; the ar- 
rivals during that month ; and the total debarked the 
day before; the monthly Human Demand; what has 
arrived; what is at sea, and the balance to come. 
Scientific supervision can do no more! 

Just as soon as troops — whether assigned to Com- 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 271 

bat organisations or Replacements — arrive in France 
they come under the administrative direction of G4. 
If they are intended for the Services of Supply they 
go where the Commanding General S.O.S. directs; 
if they are headed for the front they are distributed 
by order of G3 which is the Operations Section at 
G.H.Q. and which controls fighting. Combat troops 
arriving in units go at once to a training area for 
further training or to Barracks or Billets for a brief 
rest before going up to the Zone of Advance. 

Since we are mainly concerned with Replacements 
and more especially Replacements in the Services of 
Supply we can now follow them through. All Replace- 
ments are casuals and are usually sent to so-called 
Depot Divisions which may be anywhere in the do- 
main of the S.O.S. and which are often training cen- 
tres. These Depots are for both officers and men. 
The men are kept in Pools and are withdrawn as 
the army needs or emergencies dictate. Each Army 
Corps, it is interesting to add, is required to keep a 
so-called Replacement Battalion which provides an 
accessible and immediate source of renewal to meet 
any contingency. This battalion is like the reserve 
supply of food and equipment kept at Railhead. It 
may never be needed but when it is needed it is 
wanted in a hurry. 

It is vitally important that a complete record be 
kept of every soldier available. This means that at 
Tours you can see one of the most remarkable maps 
that the war has produced. I call it The Great Hu- 
man Map of the A.E.F., for such it is. It shows 



272 S. O. S. 

every section in France occupied by American troops. 
Red tags indicate Artillery; white, Infantry; grey, 
Mechanical Transport Units, and so on. In order to 
distinguish the two grand Divisions there is a pink 
mark on the tags of S.O.S. troops and a purple square 
on the cards of the Combat troops. On each tag is 
typed the brief biography, in terms of strength and 
movement, of the unit from the moment it landed in 
France up to the present time. 

Why is this map necessary ? I will tell you. When- 
ever Gi at G.H.Q. needs men for Replacement it sim- 
ply asks the Adjutant General of the Services of 
Supply — Colonel L. H. Bash — "What have you ?" and 
he can immediately supply the need. He does not 
look at the map, however. This map epitomises a 
remarkable Card Index which is part of the Adju- 
tant General's office. There is a card for every unit, 
for every Replacement organisation, every officer and 
every casual that reaches France. 

The card of the Division Replacement shows its 
present whereabouts; port of arrival; its various 
movements in the S.O.S. ; its strength in officers and 
men, and the name of the Commanding Officer. The 
same sort of card is kept for a Machine Shop Truck 
Unit or for a Sanitary Squad. In the case of officers 
there is a pink card for each man. It records the com- 
plete story of his movements from his arrival in 
France. At the top of the card is a scale of numbers 
from i to 12 which indicates branches of the Service 
such as Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, Engineers or 
Medical Corps. There is also a space to indicate 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 273 

whether the man is a Regular or Reserve officer. A 
red marker is placed over the number indicating the 
officer's branch of the Service. If John Jones is a 
Captain in the Quartermaster Corps the red marker 
will be over number 8. If he is a Regular officer 
there will also be a green tag. If Gi wants fifty 
Quartermaster Corps Captains the Personnel Officer 
at Tours can see from the number of red tags over 
8 exactly how many he has on hand. A different col- 
oured marker is used for each branch. 

From these cards the Weekly Strength Return of 
Replacements, Depot Divisions and Organisations in 
the S.O.S. is made up. It is for the week ending 
Wednesday at noon and is available the first thing 
every Thursday morning. It is a marvel of compact 
and classified detail. In the case of officers it shows 
the total by ranks from Second Lieutenant up to 
Colonel and also if they are attached, detached or 
absent for any reason. In the case of enlisted men 
it specifies grades from ordinary private up to regi- 
mental sergeant major. The Medical personnel is by 
grades and ranks and includes Chaplains, Nurses and 
Civilians. Likewise the Return shows all serviceable 
and unserviceable Mechanical Transport, horses, mules 
and guns. As a final human detail it reveals the army 
losses due to all causes during the week preceding 
and the number of men in training and the branches 
they represent. 

The Return that I have just described is for the 
troops in the Base, Intermediate and Advance Sec- 
tions. A similar Weekly Strength Return is made out 



274 S. O. S. 

for all troops in the Zone of the Advance. The sum 
of these Returns made out at G.H.Q. makes the 
Weekly Strength of the whole American Expedition- 
ary Force. It is the basis for much vital statistical 
compilation. At present it is hardly a source of aid 
or comfort to the enemy. 

The average man who knows nothing about war 
usually has an idea that when troops go overseas they 
live in tents or barracks when they are not fighting. 
If this were true of the American Expeditionary 
Force a part of the army would spend a large portion 
of its time building quarters. Life is too short and 
the march of events too swift to permit any such 
luxury. Besides, labour and material are much too 
valuable. As a result many thousands of our troops 
are billeted during the period of their training or rest. 
The whole process of billeting, therefore, is a most 
important and highly necessary detail in the work 
of the S.O.S. 

The mention of billets in connection with American 
troops discloses a picturesque fact. In the United 
States it is forbidden by law to billet troops. The 
reason dates back to the American Revolution when 
British troops were quartered on the Colonials and 
when this "hospitality" roused such resentment that 
the performance was never repeated under any cir- 
cumstances. It is an interesting commentary on the 
whirligigs of time to find British homes thrown wide 
open to-day to American troops and what is more 
dramatic, to see the descendants of those Revolution- 
ary foes fighting side by side for a common cause 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 275 

on the battlefields of France. The whole billeting 
procedure was a new and novel experience for the 
doughboy. 

At Tours and as a part of the work of G4 the whole 
Billeting Scheme for the A.E.F. is in charge of 
Colonel J. W. Wright. Fortunately for us the bil- 
leting of troops is almost as old as the French Army. 
Nearly every town or hamlet in France is billet-broke. 
For hundreds of years the cottages have housed 
troops. It has been reduced to such a science that 
I am not exaggerating when I say that there is a 
billeting quotation on nearly every rural domestic 
establishment in France. 

Soldiers billeted in the houses of French citizens 
are, to use the expression adopted by the French 
Courts, "enforced guests" of the property owner and 
entitled to share the fire and candle with the family. 
All householders, with the exception of legal custo- 
dians of public funds, widows and spinsters residing 
alone, and female religious societies, are liable as part 
of their duty to the State to receive these guests and 
to share their fireside with them. For this the house- 
holder is paid one franc (20 cents) per night for each 
officer provided with a bed, 20 centimes (4 cents) for 
each non-commissioned, officer and 5 centimes |(i 
cent) for each soldier. An additional 5 centimes is 
paid for each animal supplied with cover. If the ani- 
mals are picketed there is no charge. 

For the purpose of billeting we have divided 
France into Areas. At Tours a map of France sub- 
divided into these Areas hangs before Colonel 



276 S. O. S. 

Wright's desk. Just as soon as a Division is allotted 
to an Area a flag is stuck into its Area to show its 
location. The work of billeting the unit, however, 
started long before it reached France. As soon as the 
organisation sails from the American port G4, which 
is advised of the sailing, gets busy. It must deter- 
mine whether this unit goes into barracks or billets. 
If billets are decided on the work of finding an Area 
begins at once. A Board of Officers, consisting of a 
Major of the Medical Corps, a Captain of Engineers 
and a Captain of the Quartermaster Corps, are sent 
out to find a suitable Area. These three officers repre- 
sent branches of the Services that represent the most 
urgent needs to be met. This Board makes a carefufc 
inspection of all sanitary, water, and transportation 
facilities. The main idea is to reduce any new con- 
struction to a minimum. Available grounds for ma- 
noeuvring, drills and target practice are also impor- 
tant considerations. Thanks to many years of expe- 
rience the Mayor of practically every French town 
has a Billeting List, which is a list of houses and 
barns available for troop lodging. The usual arrange- 
ment is to quarter the officers in houses and the men 
in barns. 

When its investigation is complete the Board makes 
what is known as a Billeting Survey, which is a com- 
pact resume giving the name of the place; popula- 
tion ; location ; nature of terrain ; roads ; railway load- 
ing and unloading facilities; billeting capacity for 
officers and men ; warehouses available for subsistence 
and forage; bathing, stable, grazing, and garage space; 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 277 

available sites for headquarters, hospitalisation, avia- 
tion, artillery parks, repair shops, drill grounds, rifle 
ranges, guard-house, and for any possible barracks 
to be built. 

If this town or group of towns (which is often the 
case in an Area) meets requirements it is officially 
leased through the agency known as Rents, Requisi- 
tions and Claims (of which you will hear more later 
on) and is assigned to a Division. Just as soon as 
that unit arrives in France a G4 officer meets it at 
the port of arrival and escorts it to its temporary 
home where the American soldier gets his first real 
taste of French life and likewise his initial encounter 
with French language and customs. 

While the Commanding General of the Division is 
the supreme authority in the billeting area so far as 
the American troops are concerned, the formal stew- 
ardship is vested with what is known as a Zone- 
Major, who corresponds to the British Area Com- 
mandant. If there is more than one town in the 
Area each one has a Town Major. If you have spent 
any time in French towns occupied by Allied troops, 
especially British, you know that the phrase "Town 
Major" covers a multitude of jobs and trials. He is 
supposed to be a combination of a Chief of Police, 
Truant Officer, Board of Health and Inquiry and 
General Repository of Troubles. At Ypres, for exam- 
ple, I have known three different Town Majors. Each 
time the post was vacated by death because the Town 
Major's office or rather cellar was below the only 



278 S. O. S. 

building left with standing walls and under an almost 
incessant shell fire. 

The best laid billeting plans, like those well-laid 
plans of mice and men, often go astray. If an Area 
is selected before the crops are harvested, for exam- 
ple, we sometimes lose as high as forty per cent of 
space because the French must use the barns for the 
products of their fields. In such a case we are com- 
pelled to build quarters. Again, when the avalanche 
of refugees came pouring down from the north after 
the great German offensive of last spring our soldiers 
voluntarily surrendered whole sections of shelter to 
these unhappy human straws caught up in the whirl- 
wind of war. 

When you touch the billeting of troops you reach 
the authority of one of the most interesting business 
institutions in the whole A.E.F. Technically known 
as the Renting, Requisition and Claims Service or, 
as it is called for short, "R.R. & C," it is charged 
with a combination of routine and responsibility that 
makes it distinct among army organisations. Through 
its many-sided operations you discover that the Amer- 
ican Army abroad is probably the largest real estate 
operator in the world and conducts one of the largest 
known Claims agencies. It is a unique development 
of the war and of the enormous task of providing all 
the land and buildings of every kind and description 
needed by our forces in France. Yet this immense 
task, involving incessant negotiations with a Govern- 
ment and a people who are sticklers for minute de- 
tails and where the humblest cottage is the proverbial 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 279 

"every man's castle," has been accomplished with the 
minimum of friction. 

In order to appreciate the delicacy of the work of 
this Service you must keep in mind the fact that 
our army is operating in one of the most densely 
populated and highly cultivated countries in the world 
where every foot of land is utilised and nothing is 
wasted. No one realised this sooner or better than 
General Pershing himself who, as early as August, 
19 1 7, issued a General Order which contained the 
following injunction: 

"The intense cultivation of the soil in France and 
the conditions caused by the war make it necessary 
that extreme care be taken to do no damage to pri- 
vate property. The entire French manhood capable 
of bearing arms is in the field fighting the enemy. 
Only old men, women and children remain to culti- 
vate the soil. It should therefore be a point of honour 
with each member of the American Army to avoid 
doing the least damage to any property in France. 
Such damage is much more reprehensible here than 
in our own country. Those who may offend in this 
respect will be brought to trial under the 89th Article 
of War, and commanding officers will see that prompt 
reparation is made under the provisions of Article 
105, even though the damage does not exceed a single 
franc.'' 

The Service is in charge of a General Director, 
Colonel John A. Hull, the Judge Advocate, while 
there is a Chief Requisition Officer, Lieutenant Colo- 
nel H. T. Klein, and also a Chief Claims Officer, 
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Burkham, who are all lo- 



2 8o S. O. S. 

cated at Tours — the Headquarters of the Services of 
Supply. The work in the field is divided into various 
sections each one with a Section Officer. Our friend 
the Zone Major operates in connection with these 
officials. With each Division of the American Army 
there is also a representative of the Service known as 
the R.R. & C. Officer. 

The Renting is of course a very simple matter, of 
temporarily acquiring property by lease and involves 
a bargain mutually satisfactory to lessor and lessee. 
It is when you get into the complicated matter of 
Requisitions that you strike the first snag. The Amer- 
ican Army requires thousands of buildings of all 
kinds from barns to immense docks and warehouses. 
The French property owner is no more anxious to 
have his property taken for public use than the aver- 
age American citizen would be. If the American has 
any political pull he will use it to the utmost to avoid 
having his establishment commandeered. So, too, with 
the French. 

In order to facilitate this work the French Govern- 
ment has granted to the American Government the 
right to requisition French property in the event that 
a satisfactory lease cannot be obtained. It is an 
extraordinary instance of the confidence that one na- 
tional administration reposes in another and the very 
consciousness of this power has been a tower of vir- 
tue for all American officers. It means that they will 
go to the very last limit of patience and forbearance 
to avoid employing this weapon. The co-operation 
between the French Government and its citizens is 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 281 

such that the voluntary lease is the rule and the requi- 
sition is the exception. 

The infinite detail attached to voluntary leasing can 
be understood when I tell you that the enlargement of 
one Training Area alone involved the acquisition of 
fifteen hundred separate pieces of property. But this 
was an infant performance compared with the propo- 
sition that faced us in the securing of the land for 
the largest Base Supply Depot. It is eight square 
miles in area and eighteen thousand parcels were in- 
volved. This could only happen in a country like 
France where the farmer is able to work a miracle 
with a square yard of earth. 

Wherever property is acquired by lease or other- 
wise the value of the crops and the damage to the 
land must be estimated together with the determina- 
tion of a proper compensation for occupancy. The 
method of procedure in the more important cases is 
to ask the French Mayor to call the various property 
owners together. The matter is explained by the 
American Officer in charge of the negotiations who 
expresses the desire of the United States Government 
to deal fairly with the land-owners. It not infre- 
quently happens that after amicable adjustment has 
been reached a farmer will say as the matter is con- 
cluded : "If my country can trust our Allies so can I." 

With the Department of Claims you touch French 
human nature at its most sensitive spot for you invade 
the purlieus of the pocket-book. The A.E.F., like the 
B.E.F., has discovered that a damage claim is a 
Frenchman's middle name. Since this Section investi- 



282 S. O. S. 

gates and settles all claims for injury to persons and 
property caused by actions and omissions of Amer- 
ican soldiers its docket is pretty full. They include 
claims for damages to billets, land, persons, and claims 
arising out of theft, depredations, fires, acts of war or 
by A.E.F. vehicles. Congress wisely decided that they 
should be paid in accordance with the French military 
law and practice. 

The Chief Claims Officer has authority to settle 
claims amounting to not over 10,000 francs, while 
the Section Officer's authority extends over claims 
which do not exceed 500 francs in amount. The Zone 
Major's authority is limited to claims of 250 francs 
or less. Claims involving not more than 100,000 
francs must have the approval of the Commanding 
General of the Services of Supply while claims 
amounting to over 100,000 francs are approved by 
the Commander-in-Chief of the A.E.F. 

The great majority of claims are for comparatively 
small items which never fail to amaze the American 
soldier. What seems to be a trifling injury, such as 
tearing out of a manger in a stable, is a real and 
vital loss to the frugal French peasant whose lot this 
last four years has not been an easy one. Besides, 
lumber is extremely scarce in France and very diffi- 
cult for the farmer to obtain. Furthermore, the 
French peasant does business on a very small scale 
and since the beginning of the war most of the land 
cultivation has been done by women, old men arid 
young boys. 

Hence the flood of small claims that almost inun- 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 283 

dates the R.R. & C. involves items that would almost 
be regarded as a joke by the American farmer. 
Among the claims for small injuries are for broken 
window-panes, injury to paint, broken plaster, and 
door-knobs. Not an infrequent cause of complaint is 
the loss of a key. The removal of this highly-useful 
but not entirely indispensable article is never over- 
looked. The French peasant, however, regards a key 
as important and valuable as a title deed to his prop- 
erty; a state of mind, I might add, that is entirely 
shared by the owners of French hotels. I have known 
of a hotter row being kicked up over the loss of a 
key in a big French hotel than over the theft of a 
thousand dollars in America. 

Injury to French land involves two separate and 
distinct causes. One is damage resulting from the 
immediate necessities of war — the so-called "faits de 
guerre" — for which no compensation is paid, and in- 
jury which comes about in the natural course of care- 
less event. Of course human nature, no less active 
with the French than any other nationality similarly 
placed, is very apt to ascribe all losses to the second 
cause and therein lies the most frequent subject of 
controversy. Indeed it is extremely difficult some- 
times to convince the Frenchman that whatever has 
happened to his goods or his chattels was the fault 
of the god of War instead of the god of Man. 

A unit was once encamped on a farm near the front. 
Its mules were picketed nearby. Suddenly and with- 
out warning a number of German shells dropped on 
the camp. The animals were turned loose and they 



284 s. o. s. 

beat a retreat that was more strategic than orderly. 
Being by nature destructive beasts, they took the 
shortest cut to the rear, which happened to be through 
highly cultivated gardens and orchards where they 
played havoc. With great difficulty the farmer was 
convinced that the unfortunate action was an act of 
War and therefore he could receive no compensation. 

The real humours of war are found in these French 
claims for comparatively small damages. A well- 
meaning cow died from eating camouflaged grass 
meant to deceive the Hun but not the unsuspecting 
herds of France. Her owner filed a claim which 
proved that the beast was an innocent bystander of 
War and which was paid. Another cow attracted 
by the remnants of grass on a bombing range allowed 
either her curiosity or her hunger to get the better of 
her animal discretion and died as a result of eating 
the grass, which had been poisoned by the contents of 
the grenades used on the range. She was also put into 
the innocent bystander class. 

All damage by American student aviators who are 
now flying all over France and who have sometimes 
to descend unceremoniously in a field under cultiva- 
tion, are paid by the A.E.F., as are claims for the 
considerable injuries resulting in the Training Areas 
from trench-digging, bomb-throwing, rifle-practice 
and also practice with machine-guns and heavy artil- 
lery. The French have come to the conclusion that 
our horses and mules are highly discriminating when 
they go out to pasture, because they always select the 
best gardens and orchards. This straying into fertile 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 285 

fields proves to be rather an expensive item for Uncle 
Sam. 

Fires constitute a large and important part of the 
work of the Army Claims Agency. The reason is 
interesting especially when these fires happen, as they 
often do, in billets. The French fireplaces have been 
successfully used for hundreds of years but the 
Frenchman's fire is a very different thing from the 
American's fire. These tiny French hearths were 
never constructed for the fires which the average 
American likes and builds. The net result is that 
they start such a roaring conflagration that the whole 
house is involved. The investigation of a French 
fire is a most elaborate ceremony. Among the docu- 
ments which must be produced are the title papers to 
the property, the insurance policy, the birth certificate 
of the property owner and the contract of marriage 
upon which the property rights to the wife may de- 
pend. 

No branch of the R.R. & C. Service, however, is 
confronted with more complications than that which 
deals with the investigation and settlement of claims 
for damages done by American vehicles to citizens and 
property on the streets and roads of France. Com- 
pared with our highways the average French street 
in the small towns where many of our troops are 
quartered is an alley. The French citizens regard it 
as an inalienable right to walk in the street rather 
than on the sidewalk. Quite naturally they come in 
more or less frequent painful contact with the heavy 
American trucks that are constantly on the move. The 



286 S. O. S. 

doctrine of contributory negligence which frequently 
is a complete defence in America does not obtain in 
France. Hence we have many street accident claims 
to pay. 

The French have a high sense of appreciation of 
our justice and generosity in this matter of damage 
claims. Let it be said to their credit that they some- 
times do not present a bill of injury. Not long ago 
the following letter was received by the Commanding 
General of the Services of Supply from a father 
whose daughter had been injured by one of our big 
motor trucks: 

"In the name of my daughter, victim of an accident 
caused by an auto truck in the service of your army; 
in the name of her late husband who died for France 
with decorations by order of the army; of his daugh- 
ter and my whole family; considering the correct at- 
titude and considering the painful position of the 
military auto-driver, under the strict lash of military 
discipline, I have the honour to plead in his favour 
for your kind indulgence. 

"After the pain and suffering resulting from the 
accident which I hope is only temporary it will be 
profoundly painful to us to think that a brave soldier 
who came to defend us, may be punished severely 
for an act for which he is not to blame. 

"Trusting in your kindness, commander, will you 
receive kindly the assurance of our high regard." 

All this difficult work requires a highly specialised 
training, partly legal but mostly human. In order to 
secure the necessary personnel a school has been estab- 
lished at Tours to equip men for the R.R. & C. Serv- 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 287 

ice. It is held in a whitewashed room in the old 
French Barracks. More than one student bears on 
his right sleeve the chevron that proclaims "wounded 
in action." Typical of the contrasts that war creates 
this institution is in charge of a former lecturer at 
the Harvard Law School. Stranger still is the situa- 
tion which daily finds American officers, lawyers by 
profession, sitting as quasi courts in equity through- 
out France and administering French laws to French 
people so that justice shall prevail. In this war — as 
in no other — everything is possible and nothing is 
surprising. 

When posterity makes its appraisal of the American 
effort in France no detail will probably come in for 
a larger degree of wonder and admiration than the 
immense amount of construction reared by these alien 
hands in a foreign land. The A.E.F. has been a 
Master Builder. The whole task of army construc- 
tion comprises a branch of the American Business of 
War that expresses American energy and enterprise 
to a degree not surpassed in any other Service of 
Supply. Uncle Sam is a Boss Contractor and on a 
stupendous scale. He runs a building business pre- 
cisely like any of the great construction corporations 
in New York or Chicago. The only difference is that 
while a private concern must solicit trade, the A.E.F. 
gets all it wants without the asking. 

At the head of this work is Brigadier General Edgar 
Jadwin, Director of Construction and Forestry, whose 
office in that now-famous quadrangle at Tours is the 
nerve-centre of the army building that ranges from 



288 S. O. S. 

the construction of an immense dock at a Base port 
up to the erection of a temporary storage shed in the 
Zone of the Armies. Under him is an army of more 
than 100,000 men, including thousands of foresters. 
He could build a fair-sized city almost overnight; no 
specialised task from a bakery to a cold storage plant 
is outside the capabilities of this host which toils 
with hammer and saw with the same fidelity as the 
man who fights with guns. In a previous article I 
told the story of some of the achievements registered 
by the army engineers. It only remains to show the 
business side of the organisation which is a striking 
lesson in centralisation. 

Despite the myriad construction enterprises con- 
stantly underway throughout France there is a "fol- 
low-up" system which keeps track of every undertak- 
ing. In what is known as a File of Projects, General 
Jadwin maintains an up-to-date record of all work 
under way. Each piece of work is on a separate sheet 
and whether it is a dock, warehouse or hospital he can 
tell at once how far it has advanced and what remains 
to be done. This results from the fact that his Service 
is charted from Director down to a gang cutting tim- 
ber in a far-away forest. He has a Chief Engineer 
in every one of the Sections in France. Each Chief 
has his own organisation, which is a link in the army 
Construction chain. If a dock is to be built in Base 
Section Number One the plans and specifications are 
sent to the Chief Engineer of that Section who is 
charged with execution. It is up to him to see it 
through. He makes d,aily and weekly reports of 





BRIG. GEN. EDGAR JADWIN 



BRIG. GEN. M. L. WALKER 






S'"S 





COLONEL W. J. WILGUS BRIG. GEN. G. VAX HORN MOSELEY 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 289 

progress, which enable the Director to keep his File 
of Projects live. When I was in Base Section Num- 
ber Two exactly one thousand projects of one kind 
or another were under way. 

This Project File, however, is only one detail in 
the plan of organisation. The whole scheme of army 
construction is visualised on the huge Map of Con- 
struction which hangs in General Jadwin's office and 
which shows every piece of work under way. Each 
kind of job is indicated by a colour. A hospital is 
indicated by a tan square; a railway yard by a white 
one; a Supply Depot in straw; a Camp Site in blue; 
an Aviation Camp in red, and so on. 

In the same way each type of work has its own 
chart. What is known as the Hospitalisation Chart is 
one of the marvels of system. It shows in waves and 
in thousands of beds (all hospitals are built in terms 
of bed-capacity) how the enormous system of Amer- 
ican Flospitalisation in France is expanding by leaps 
and bounds. A line in blue, for example, shows the 
bed space available in Base hospitals and hotels; green 
indicates the bed space in camp hospitals, while mauve 
locates hospital buildings under way. The A.E.F. fol- 
lows the rule of having ten hospital beds for every 
hundred men oversea. Our hospital construction, or 
Hospitalisation as it is known, is so standardised that 
we build in regular units of a thousand beds and have 
been known to erect three or four of these in a single 
day. 

All construction plans and specifications with the 
exception of those for Railway Transportation are 



290 S. O. S. 

prepared by a large force of draughtsmen which is 
part of the staffof the Director of Construction and 
Forestry. The plans for railway projects are drawn 
under the direction of the Director General of Trans- 
portation, for whom General Jadwin acts as Consult- 
ing Engineer. 

This mighty construction not only requires an army 
of toilers but an immense amount of lumber. This 
brings us to the second phase of General Jadwin's 
work. Obviously it is impossible to transport the 
millions and millions of feet of timber from the 
United States. Tonnage, as you have learned, is the 
supreme problem of the A.E.F. and must be utilised 
for material that cannot be obtained abroad. The 
army therefore decided to produce its own timber by 
cutting it in France. This has led to the organisation 
and development of a complete Forestry Service which 
is mobilised with the same scientific care as any other 
branch of the army. 

In the Forestry regiments you can find "lumber 
jacks" who have made the chips fly in the forests 
of Wisconsin, Maine, Washington, Michigan, Ore- 
gon, Louisiana and Alabama. They are a hardy, sea- 
soned, weather-beaten, competent lot and have ren- 
dered a service comparable to that of the locomotive 
engineers and firemen who left cabs and tenders on 
the American systems to drive the army iron horses 
in France. 

By arrangement with the French Government we 
have acquired nearly two hundred French forests 
where you can hear the zip of American saws and the 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 291 

rattle of the machinery of portable American saw- 
mills that have been brought to France "knocked 
down/' and set up wherever they are needed. One 
of these saw-mills cut 20,000 feet of lumber in ten 
hours. A battery of five of them cut 120,000 feet 
in two ten-hour shifts. 

All these forests are obtained by what is known as 
the Acquisition Section of the Forestry Service. The 
French have a peculiar affection for their trees and 
they are the best foresters in the world. It makes them 
weep to see the magnificent stretches of woodland sac- 
rificed for army use. But, as a Frenchman said to me 
in discussing this matter: "We would rather have 
our forests cut down scientifically by the Americans 
in the cause of freedom than to have them perma- 
nently blackened and destroyed by German shells.'' 
So great is the French regard for their forests that 
a group of French foresters accompanies each Amer- 
ican Forestry gang and marks the trees to be cut. 
These groups of trees are known as coupes, which is 
the French for trees to be cut. Every American who 
works in a French forest in conjunction with the 
French experts will go back home better equipped for 
his job if he expects to be a woodman. No better 
propaganda for the conservation of our natural re- 
sources and more especially our forests can be imag- 
ined. You get some idea of the significance of this 
forestry work when I tell you that we need or will 
need for twelve months more than one billion feet of 
boards. Already we are cutting 30,000,000 feet a 



292 s. o. s. 

month and the number of our saw-mills is rapidly 
nearing the one hundred mark. 

Construction is only one consumer of army wood in 
France. The army must be kept warm, which means 
that for the twelve months between July 1st, 191 8, 
and June 30th, 19 19, the Quartermaster Corps — 
which provides fuel for the A.E.F. — will require 
1,250,000 tons of cord wood. One cord equals two 
tons. The wood for fuel is cut under the direction 
of the Chief Quartermaster and at the time I write 
is being done in the Advance Section by more than 
ten thousand men who include nearly two thousand 
civilian labourers; the others are American soldiers. 

A study of the American Business of War would 
be incomplete without a look at that highly necessary 
detail in the conduct of a corporation, which is the 
pay roll. In addition to many war-born distinctions 
Uncle Sam has become one of the largest employers 
in the world with a box-office second to none. Al- 
though the doughboy has no worries about the High 
Cost of Living so far as France is concerned (he is 
fed like a fighting cock) he likes to have money in 
his pocket and his grateful Government sees that he 
gets it promptly no matter if he is fighting at the 
front or serving in the rear. 

The principal army disbursing in France is done 
under the auspices of the Chief Quartermaster, who 
pays all troops except those in the Engineer, Signal, 
Medical, Ordnance and Air Services. He also pro- 
vides the money for billets, for subsistence, clothing 
and gasolene bought in Europe and for the rental of 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 293 

the French telegraph wires that we lease. The Chief 
Disbursing Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel C. B. Eckels, 
handles more money than most big banks. Although 
he deals in millions he never sees any of the actual 
cash. In September alone the amount of money that 
passed through his office represented more than $100,- 
000,000. Of course this money is not sent from the 
United States. A very simple system of exchange of 
national credits makes it possible for us fo always have 
available funds. 

Every American soldier is paid in the money of the 
country in which he is serving and in cash. If a 
doughboy in France is unmarried, carries no war risk 
insurance and has not subscribed on the instalment 
plan for a Liberty Bond, he gets $33 a month, or, 
based on the rate of exchange at the time I write, 188 
francs and 10 centimes. Wherever a soldier has allot- 
ments, whether for family, Liberty Loan or insurance, 
this amount is first deducted from his pay and he gets 
the proceeds. The men are paid once a month by 
so-called Disbursing Quartermasters. If a man is ill 
or wounded in a hospital the money is brought to him. 

With pay as with everything else the American sol- 
dier gets the benefit of the last word in army con- 
venience. This means that recently we have intro- 
duced a new and compact Individual Pay Record 
Book which is a substitute for the old-time and cum- 
bersome army pay roll which the men had to sign. 
If he were wounded or lost he frequently missed his 
pay for several months because there was no accessi- 
ble record of what he had hitherto received. The new 



294 S. O. S. 

pay book, which must be carried by the soldier on his 
person all the time, eliminates this hardship. In it is 
recorded every payment made to him and it is likewise 
a complete history of the owner together with his 
family financial obligations if he has any. 

This book is patterned after a similar one carried 
by the British Tommy. It lacks one detail of the 
model, however, in that it has no blank space on which 
the soldier ma*y make his will. Thousands of British 
troops have written their last testament within sound 
of the guns and just before going over the top in that 
little blank space which is so often their farewell 
indited message on earth. 

The American army pay book is a great deal more 
than an up-to-date ledger of the soldier's income. The 
record of the automatic withdrawal of the allotments 
for wife or mother is a constant reminder of obliga- 
tion to family, while the equally systematic payment 
of his instalment on the Liberty Loan is a kindred 
stimulus to financial responsibility to his country and 
his flag. It begets a sense of thrift and saving that, 
like so many other war experiences, becomes a con- 
structive precedent for peace. 

The army pay book is just one of many first aids 
to the soldier's physical and economic convenience. 
Just as a Store on Wheels goes to the man in the 
trenches so does a Travelling Adjuster visit units in 
the field in the interests of War Risk Insurance. The 
psychology of this is interesting. The nearer a man 
gets to the Zone of Death the more apt he is to want 
to protect his family in case he is killed. A bursting 



MARVELS OF ARMY ORGANISATION 295 

German shell, therefore, is the best possible "selling 
talk" for a War Risk Insurance policy. 

If a soldier wants to continue his studies in France 
he has an opportunity to enroll in a Field University 
which is being equipped with $5,000,000 worth of 
text-books and which will have a thousand instructors 
from American schools and colleges. If he is unnat- 
uralised he does not have to wait until a bullet makes 
him an American by adoption. By signing a paper 
he can become a full-fledged citizen of the U.S.A. No 
matter what branch he is in, he can get the special 
news of it served up in the official organ of that 
Service. The Engineers have a monthly magazine 
called "The Spike" ; the Motor Transport Corps pub- 
lishes a periodical named "The Steering Wheel"; 
while the Transportation Department has unfurled 
"Rails and Sails" to the breeze. To complete this 
array of army publicity is the Stars and Stripes — 
the official newspaper of the A.E.F. — which gives the 
American Business of War what has come to be an 
essential annex of every well-regulated corporation — 
a Press Agent. Unlike the wicked corporation, how- 
ever, it needs none. 



XII — System Unto Death 



THE extraordinary system that accounts for all 
things in the army from a can of food to a 
five-ton truck renders a kindred and ultimate 
service with each little sepulchre of glory that dots 
the fields of France. Here is an act that reaches 
across the sea and touches the hearts and homes of all 
America. Since no soldier's body can be transported 
to the United States until after the peace treaty is 
signed, the care of the overseas graves becomes a mat- 
ter of supreme responsibility. Through a supervision 
that combines tender solicitude with minute detail 
nearly every square yard of French earth "with a 
richer earth concealed" is marked and can be identi- 
fied when the Pilgrimage of Remembrance begins. 

Our grave registration is perhaps the most difficult 
in the war for the reason that while the British, for 
example, operate in a compact area in France our 
men are in the line from the English Channel to the 
Vosges. They have been thrown in the battle-front 
at unexpected times and places and everywhere they 
have christened the ground with their good red blood. 
The complicated and sometimes hazardous labour of 
finding and marking these graves is entrusted to what 
is known as the Graves Registration Service, which 
has fulfilled a sacred obligation with a fidelity that 

296 



SYSTEM UNTO DEATH 297 

will give this all-necessary detail of war a whole new 
distinction in the days to come. 

The direction of such a task demands not only real 
organising genius but sympathy and understanding as 
well. All these qualities are happily embodied in Lieu- 
tenant Colonel Charles C. Pierce, who is the Chief of 
the Service. This big-souled, kindly man has cheered 
the aching hearts of bereaved American wives, moth- 
ers and sweethearts ever since the first Philippines cam- 
paign took toll of our troops. He went to Manila as 
an army chaplain. He soon found out that saving 
families from the agony of suspense about the loca- 
tion of the graves of the loved-ones was as important 
as saving souls, so he devised a scientific system of 
accurate identification and registration. When we 
were ready to establish a similar service in France he 
was the logical choice to organise it. 

Although its function is as sentimental as it is grue- 
some the Graves Registration Service is organised 
precisely like any other branch of the American Army. 
Colonel Pierce, who is part of the Quartermaster 
Corps, is at the apex of the pyramid which outlines 
every detail of its work from the acquisition of ceme- 
teries to the photographic record of a lonely grave 
somewhere on the fringe of battle. The G.R.S. — 
as the Graves Registration Service is called for short 
— has nothing to do with the burial of the dead (this 
is done by Burial Squads with the army), but it takes 
up the work the moment that the grave is filled. It 
registers and inspects graves; corresponds with rela- 
tives and friends of deceased soldiers, conducts a liai- 



298 S. O. S. 

son with our Allies in all matters of mortuary interest, 
and, what is most important of all, maintains such 
a complete and accurate record of every soldier's grave 
in France that when the war is over it can be easily 
located. 

To do this, Graves Registration must have the co- 
operation of the armies in the field. It begins with the 
individual soldier. Every officer, private and civilian 
attached to the A.E.F. must wear two aluminum iden- 
tity tags. They are about the size of a silver half- 
dollar and of a suitable thickness and must be worn 
suspended from the neck underneath the clothing by 
a cord or thong passed through a hole in the tag. The 
second tag is suspended from the first one by a short 
piece of string or tape. In the case of officers these 
discs are stamped with the name, rank, regiment, corps 
or department of the wearer and the letters "U.S." 
If a man is an aviator his tag would bear the words 
"U. S. Air Service." Many officers wear a metal 
identification plate attached to a chain around the 
wrist. With private soldiers the tags are simply 
stamped with the soldier's name and the letters 
"U. S. A." on one side and the army serial number on 
the other. In the British army the religious faith of 
the soldier is indicated. C.E. stands for Church of 
England and R.C. for Roman Catholic. 

When a soldier is killed in action the burial squad 
is required to bury one of the identification discs with 
the body and place the other in a bottle or attach it 
in some way to the temporary marker over his grave. 



SYSTEM UNTO DEATH 299 

This marker is usually a so-called "peg" on which 
the number of the soldier is written with a hard black- 
lead pencil. All burial units carry pegs or wood 
crosses on which the serial number is written. The 
permanent marking of the soldier's grave is an olive 
drab cross bearing an aluminum plate showing the 
soldier's name and number. 

If all soldiers were killed where proper time and 
care could be exercised in marking their graves the 
task of registration would be easy. But troops fall in 
the heat of battle inside and out of the enemy's 
trenches, in No Man's Land, and on spots that remain 
under fire sometimes for days and weeks. They are 
often buried where they fall and frequently they are 
not allowed to sleep their last sleep in peace. More 
than one grave has been churned up by an exploding 
shell which destroyed every mark of identification. 
The job of Graves Registration is not to reinter that 
body but discover some clue which will restore the 
lost identification. The methods adopted are many 
and unique. A soldier whose grave has been destroyed 
by shell fire has sometimes been identified through a 
process of elimination which meant the checking up 
of hundreds of last resting-places. Again a coin or 
a keepsake found in the grave has been associated 
with its one-time owner. The G.R.S., however, re- 
gards no toil too arduous to establish the identity of 
a dead soldier. It knows that for every bit of effort 
expended in France there is a corresponding world of 
gratitude in a saddened home somewhere in America. 



300 S. O. S. 

Registration of graves involves no small degree of 
danger. In the Zone of the Armies the G.R.S. Units 
follow closely on the heels of the burial parties of 
the combat troops, registering and verifying the tem- 
porary markings of all graves, searching for and 
burying bodies that have been overlooked, and regu- 
lating and organising the battleground cemetery which 
rises so often and so< sadly almost overnight on the 
hillsides and in the valleys. Some of these Regis- 
trars develop an uncanny instinct for locating un- 
marked graves. I have known them to stop suddenly 
on the road and after a swift glance at a field nearby 
that gave absolutely no sign of a grave say, "A soldier 
is buried out there." Ask how they know it and they 
will tell you that it is determined by a variety of rea- 
sons which may be a slight depression in the ground 
or the appearance and formation of the soil. 

After every battle an offensive is launched for the 
dead precisely like the one launched for the living. 
It is composed of the Advance Groups of the Graves 
Registration Service. Each one consists of an officer 
and ten men. They deploy a skirmish line to find out 
if any grave or bodies have been overlooked. They 
work under shell fire and perform a service that is 
both heroic and holy. I can pay no higher tribute to 
what they do than to reproduce part of a Letter of 
Commendation about one of them — it was in charge 
of Second Lieutenant Homer B. McCormick — which 
was issued by special direction of General Pershing. 
The official account of the particular performance is 
as follows: 



SYSTEM UNTO DEATH 301 

"On April 20, Lieut. McCormick and his Group 
arrived at Mandres and began their work under heavy 
shell fire and gas, and although troops were in dug- 
outs, these men immediately went to the cemetery, and 
in order to preserve records and locations, repaired 
and erected new crosses as fast as the old ones were 
blown down. They also completed the extension to 
the cemetery, this work occupying one and a half 
hours, during which time shells were falling contin- 
ually and they were subjected to mustard gas. They 
gathered many bodies which had been first in the 
hands of the Germans, and were later retaken by 
American counter attacks. Identification was espe- 
cially difficult, all papers and tags having been re- 
moved, and most of the bodies being in a terrible 
condition and beyond recognition. The Lieutenant 
in command particularly mentions Sergeant Keating 
and Privates La Rue and Murphy, as having been 
responsible for the most gruesome part of the work 
of identification, examining every body most thor- 
oughly, searching for scars or tattoo marks and where 
bodies were blown to pieces, these men were especially 
particular to make minute examination, regardless of 
the danger attendant upon their work. This group 
of men was in charge of everything at Mandres from 
the time the bodies were brought in until they were 
interred and marked with crosses and proper name 
plates were attached/' 

As soon as a man is killed in action his death is 
reported by telegraph or runner by his immediate 
Commanding Officer to the Adjutant of the unit, who 
in turn sends it to the Adjutant General of the A.E.F., 
who supervises the preparation of the Casualty List — 
the Roll of Honour. No casualty is reported, how- 



302 S. O. S. 

ever, until the official grave location is received. This 
is due to the fact that men missing and reported dead 
for days or weeks sometimes show up in time or have 
been captured by the enemy. The Service, therefore, 
takes every precaution to prevent a premature notice 
of death being sent out. 

The system of grave location becomes a highly im- 
portant part of Casualty Intelligence. When a grave 
is properly marked a so-called Grave Location Blank 
— made out in duplicate — is sent to the Graves Regis- 
tration office. It shows the name, rank and number 
of the soldier; the place of burial; the grave number; 
whether the grave is marked with a peg, headboard, 
cross or bottle ; the disposition of the identification tag 
and any other remarks. This Blank must be signed 
by the chaplain who officiated at the burial or some 
other officer present. One copy of this Blank goes 
to Graves Registration and the other to Central Rec- 
ords for its Master Card Index of the A.E.F. The 
permanent record of the grave is put on a card which 
contains the army history of the soldier; where he 
died; the nature of his wound; how he was identified; 
the number of the Casualty Cablegram in which his 
death was officially reported ; his next of kin, and the 
disposition of his personal effects. A special Effects 
Depot, in Base Section Number One, assembles the 
property of all men killed and transmits it to their 
families. 

Not content with making certain that every grave 
is properly located and registered, the G.R.S. performs 
still another kindly service in the shape of a letter 



SYSTEM UNTO DEATH 303 

written by Colonel Pierce to the next of kin as soon 
as the location of the spot is definitely known. It 
conveys the assurance that the six feet of French earth 
specified will be cared for during the war and until 
there may be further disposition of the remains. That 
this army thoughtfulness is not without its grateful 
appreciation is shown by the hundreds of letters that 
have been received. Out of them I select one which 
reached France just before Memorial Day, 1918, and 
which shows what a patriotic American father thought 
of Graves Registration. Here it is: 

"My dear Sir: 

"Your kind and sympathetic letter in regard to my 
son's death, burial and grave location was received 
yesterday. Your letter is a great support to me and 
it is good to note the absence of caste in our Amer- 
ican Army. Your letter gives the tone of a true com- 
rade, soldier and American. My son was all I had — 
he and I were pals. I shall take his place in an ap- 
propriate position as soon as I can. 

"I am enclosing a check for ten dollars and ask 
you to place such flowers on his grave as you can. 
I w r ould like a lily if you can get one (he always 
bought a lily for my birthday on April 12). If you 
have any money left use it for the graves of some 
of the boys who have no fathers to send checks. 

"Respectfully yours, 



"P. S. Will you please put a card on the flowers 
for Memorial Day, saying that they are from Dad 
and Mother." 

The thoughtfulness of Graves Registration has no 
more concrete expression than in the special provision 



304 S. O. S. 

for marking the graves of the Hebrew dead. In no 
instance is a cross used. If only crosses are available 
the horizontal piece is removed and the name plate 
or number is attached to the perpendicular section or 
standard. The prescribed marking for Jewish soldiers 
is a square headboard which is carried on the regular 
list of Quartermaster supplies. When you know this 
you feel certain that if any Mahometan should die in 
the service of the A.E.F. he would be laid away with 
his head towards his beloved East! 

The army system which knows neither friend nor 
foe carries its tender ministrations to the enemy dead. 
Whenever it is necessary for the A.E.F. to> bury a 
German or an Austrian a section of a military ceme- 
tery is utilised. A report of this grave location is 
made just as in the case of an American. The indica- 
tions of rank and service are reproduced in German 
as well as English. The location of these graves is 
conveyed to the German authorities through the Amer- 
ican Legation at Berne, acting with the Red Cross. 

One more picturesque detail will illustrate the thor- 
oughness of Graves Registration. Whenever a grave 
is "isolated," which means that it may be outside a 
cemetery, in some obscure French burial-ground or in 
a detached field, a sketch is made of it and becomes a 
part of the location records, I have seen scores of 
these sketches. They are so minute and accurate that 
a child could find the grave by having the diagram in 
its hand. If the grave is near a road the sketch will 
not only show the road and adjacent territory but will 
specify that "a group of firs is six feet away." On 



SYSTEM UNTO DEATH 305 

another sketch I saw this direction: "The grave is 
fifteen feet from the road and under a shell hole in 
a stone wall." Arrangements have recently been com- 
pleted for a photographic record of every American 
grave in France. It will be done under the auspices 
of the Red Cross. Such elaborate supervision means 
that the percentage of "unknown" American dead in 
this war will be smaller than ever before in history. 

The efficiency of the A.E.F. obtains even unto 
death : Greater love than this hath no army. 



XIII — Business Managing War 

WHEN the real story of the Great War is writ- 
ten and some dispassionate appraisal is made 
of the causes of victory it will be found that 
the laurel of civilisation's triumph will rest with no 
single nation. It was not the unspeakable sacrifice 
of Belgium, the incomparable heroism of France, the 
dauntless courage of the British, the blithe daring of 
America, the fortitude of Italy, or the well-nigh for- 
gotten Russian resistance of the early days. Rather 
was it the co-ordination of all this superb effort ex- 
pressed in the Unity of High Command at the front, 
coupled with no less flexible and compact Unity of 
Supply in the rear, that made the achievement pos- 
sible. 

To this unification, which must stand out as the 
really determining factor in the war (Germany did 
not begin to crumple up until the Foch Consolidated 
Hammer began to strike) America has contributed 
her full share. Nor is this surprising. Co-ordination 
is simply another name for that larger standardisa- 
tion of efficiency and product which epitomise her in- 
dustrial genius. It became one of her overseas aims 
the moment she became a full-fledged partner in the 
Business of War and had an army in the field. With 
this Business Managing of War, as it may well be 

306 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 307 

called, we will conclude our survey of the American 
Supply System in France. Through some of the prec- 
edents it has established we will not only be able to 
cope with the immense problem of demobilisation but 
assume intelligently the new economic responsibilities 
which will come with the daybreak of world peace. 

The scheme of co-ordinated Allied supply is really 
due to the foresight of the Commander-in-Chief of 
the American armies in France. Like most admir- 
able institutions it began at home, which means that 
it was practically born in the A.E.F. The American 
Army had to be adequately supplied before it could 
fire a shot. Such a supply demanded a stupendous 
shipping and at the outset we had few ships. Ton- 
nage, as I have often pointed out in these chapters, 
was the supreme problem of the A.E.F. from the be- 
ginning. Every effort had to be bent to relieve the 
strain on it. 

One definite way was to procure everything pos- 
sible abroad. It necessitated the establishment of a 
huge purchasing agency which would co-ordinate 
army buying and become a vital link in the whole 
supply chain. This has been done and on a truly 
American scale of scope and action. When I tell 
you that up to November 1, 19 18, we had purchased 
8,400,000 tons in Europe you realise what this organ- 
isation has done in bulk alone. But this is not all. 
Every ton of material bought in Europe means that 
a ship ton of 40 cubic feet is saved for men or sup- 
plies that must and can only be brought from the 
United States. Multiply this 8,400,000 times and it 



308 S. O. S. 

becomes quite evident that without the purchasing 
agency we have set up, the whole American war par- 
ticipation might have been seriously impaired. 
Through its Labour Bureau it secured, maintained and 
militarised an army of 47,000 civilians in Europe, 
Asia and Africa, which was another tonnage saver. 
It has been the silent submarine-fighter. The story 
of the world-wide machine that it has created, the 
fortitude and resource of the business men in khaki 
who operate it, and the constructive and co-operative 
influence that it has exerted upon the conduct of the 
war, comprise a fitting finale to the panorama of the 
Services of Supply of which it is a part, and which 
has passed in review before you. 

Army purchase began in France the moment that 
the first American Expeditionary Force landed. Ob- 
viously it could not carry all the supplies it needed 
and hungry men and beasts cannot wait. In addition, 
our first Engineering units arrived practically with- 
out tools. It meant intensive purchasing, which has 
kept up on an increasing scale ever since. 

As the overseas force expanded this buying which 
began by scattered units was done by organised Serv- 
ices. Each Service has its Purchasing Officer. The in- 
evitable happened. So urgent was the demand for sup- 
plies of all kinds that these branches of the army were 
soon in commendable but costly competition with each 
other. When the Quartermaster Corps priced a quan- 
tity of material, for example, and returned in a few 
days with the necessary authority to buy, it discov- 
ered that the Engineers had already absorbed it. The 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 309 

evil went further because the French business man, 
being human, stimulated this competition and raised 
his price accordingly. The French army, in turn, felt 
the effect of this competition and a serious situation 
developed. 

No one realised this more swiftly than General 
Pershing, whose grasp of business detail and instinct 
for standardisation are almost uncanny. He saw that 
while every ton we bought in Europe aided the whole 
shipping programme, the purchase of that ton must 
be orderly and constructive. In August, 191 7, he 
authorised a General Purchasing Board composed of 
the Purchasing Officers of the various Services and 
with a General Purchasing Agent at the head. This 
Agent was to be the representative of the Commander- 
in-Chief in liaison with the various Allied purchasing 
agencies and charged also with the co-ordination and 
supervision of all purchasing agents in the A.E.F. 

The problem was to find a business man in the army 
with sufficient financial and commercial experience to 
attach himself to a desk and organise this all-impor- 
tant work. It required vision, executive ability, and 
the power to handle difficult situations arising out of 
negotiations with foreign governments. Fortunately 
a man of this calibre happened to be wearing the uni- 
form of an officer of Engineers in France. He was 
the then Lieutenant Colonel, and now Brigadier Gen- 
eral, Charles G. Dawes, who had been Comptroller of 
Currency under President McKinley and who had 
worked his way from humble station in an Ohio town 
to be president of one of the leading Trust Companies 



310 S. O. S. 

in Chicago. He expressed the highest possible capital- 
isation of business brains for the Business of War. 
When we went to war with Germany he sought active 
service. Having been Chief Engineer of a small rail- 
way in the Middle West in his early days, he obtained 
a commission in a famous Engineer regiment which 
was one of the first to arrive in France and which 
has left its impress in docks, railway construction and 
Supply Depots. 

General Pershing knew General Dawes when the 
latter was a practising lawyer in Lincoln, Nebraska. 
He had followed his admirable career in the army so 
he installed him in Paris as General Purchasing Agent. 
He began in a small room in the Hotel Sainte Anne 
which was then the Headquarters of the American 
Army. To-day his staff and the associated organisa- 
tions not only occupy the largest hotel in Paris but 
have representatives in nearly a dozen different coun- 
tries. Thus with Purchasing — as with every other 
detail of American Supply — you get the now familiar 
miracle of an almost unprecedented expansion. 

When you examine the work of the General Pur- 
chasing Agent and the General Purchasing Board — 
they are two separate and distinct propositions — you 
find that they parallel for war the same system of 
organisation observed by a huge corporation in peace. 
Let me illustrate with the case of the United States 
Steel Corporation. If every one of its subsidiary com- 
panies purchased raw material, machinery and general 
supplies on its own and in the open market the over- 
head cost would be excessive on account of the lively 




BRIGADIER GENERAL CHARLES G. DAWES 
General Purchasing Agent, A. E. F. 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 311 

competition. Instead, the corporation established a 
Chief Purchasing Agent who buys for the whole insti- 
tution. All requirements are submitted to him ahead 
of time; he anticipates needs, and gets the best pos- 
sible product and price. It is centralised buying. This 
is precisely what happened with the A.E.F. The 
"G.P.A." — as the General Purchasing Agent is 
called — and the "G.P.B.," which is the General Pur- 
chasing Board, do all the overseas buying for our 
armies through a system that is a marvel of co-ordina- 
tion and result. 

The General Purchasing Agent occupies a peculiar 
yet distinct position. Although every dollar's worth 
of material that we buy outside of America is pur- 
chased under his authority he does no buying himself. 
The buying is done through the heads of the Purchas- 
ing Departments of the various Services who consti- 
tute the General Purchasing Board and who maintain, 
as a result, an independence of purchase. They pur- 
chase by category, that is by specific lists of items, and 
the process is therefore known as Categorical Pur- 
chasing. The General Purchasing Agent, however, 
acts as a general co-ordinator of all this buying. He 
approves although he cannot initiate purchase. He 
likewise exercises the full power of veto which is the 
check on excess, extravagance and conflict with the 
interests of our Allies. 

Whether in France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Hol- 
land, Sweden, or Portugal the General Purchasing 
Agent, through his representative in that country, be- 
comes the outpost and the scout for supplies. He 



312 S. O. S. 

locates horses, digs up raw material, discovers ma- 
chinery, secures options on crops. The actual buying 
of all this, however, is done by the representative of 
the Service for which it is intended acting under the 
G.P.A. representative's supervision. This procedure 
is expedited — you must step lively in war buying — 
for the reason that an officer of each Service is at- 
tached to every foreign branch of the G.P.A. In such 
a transaction, therefore, the agent of the G.P.A. acts 
as Co-ordinating Officer. The great bulk of our over- 
seas buying, however, is in France where an explana- 
tion of the system reveals the whole working of an 
organisation which is second to no Allied Business 
institution geared up to the needs of the war. 

In order to get a comprehensive view we must begin 
in the office of General Dawes in the Elysee Palace 
Hotel which is the Headquarters of all A.E.F. pur- 
chasing activities. Every American who has visited 
Paris in recent years will at once appreciate the pic- 
turesque significance that attaches to the use of this 
hotel for war purposes. The imposing stone struc- 
ture, which occupies a full block on the Champs 
Elysees, was the favourite stamping ground — so far 
as Paris was concerned — of the beauty, chivalry and 
royalty of Europe before the war. Here King Leo- 
pold of Belgium maintained a suite. In the foyer 
dukes, diplomats and stage favourites mingled in gay 
and festive array. 

Vanished are all these social splendours. Where 
once the champagne glasses clinked you hear the rat- 
tle of American typewriters; in the gilded dining room 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 313 

whose no less gilded price lists nightly punctured the 
pocket-book you find a Board of Accounts pruning 
army pay-rolls; in those splendid chambers which 
rustled with silk and reeked with perfume American 
business men wrestle with contracts, while the marble 
bath-rooms, once the wonder and admiration of the 
French capital, are the repository of card indexes. One 
of the smartest hotels in Europe has become the hum- 
ming counting room of an animated branch of the 
American Business of War. It is one more convincing 
evidence that war, which is no respecter of persons, 
is likewise the supreme leveller of hotel rank. 

Typical of all this denatured splendour is the fact 
that General Dawes' office is in the stately and pan- 
elled salon of what was, in happier days, the Grande 
Suite. But it is shorn of its trappings and save for 
the noble ceiling and ornate mantel is just like the 
work-room of the President of a great corporation. 
In the centre is the long table where the occasional 
meetings of the General Purchasing Board — the Di- 
rectors of this vast Purchasing Corporation — are held. 
Facing the door and at a simple flat-top desk sits Gen- 
eral Dawes while opposite to him is Lieutenant-Colo- 
nel Nelson D. Jay, who left the Vice-Presidency of 
one of the largest New York Trust Companies to do 
his share in France. 

In this book I have described many charts of army 
organisation yet none perhaps is more ramified — 
certainly none embraces such far-flung authority — as 
the one which bares the operations of the General 
Purchasing Agent, who is on the administrative staff 



314 S. O. S. 

of General Pershing. At the apex is the Commander- 
in-Chief. Linked with him is the Commanding Gen- 
eral of the Services of Supply. Tied up with both of 
these is the G.P.A., from whom radiates such a net- 
work of co-ordinated agencies that the chart looks 
like the reproduction of an octopus whose tentacles 
extend everywhere. They bind the A.E.F. up with 
all our Allies; they extend to every foreign country 
where we buy supplies; they disclose a succession of 
compact, scientific and highly-organised bureaus that 
do everything from standardising accounts to setting 
up insurance against after-the-war investigations. To 
analyse them in order is to dissect a system that could 
audit, manage, and safeguard the fiscal interests of any 
huge American corporation no* matter how large. 

The Control Bureau will aptly illustrate how the 
organisation works. At the head is Lieutenant-Colo- 
nel Francis E. Drake whose long contact with Big 
Business in Europe equipped him to deal with the 
many problems that Continental war-time buying de- 
velop. Associated with him is a group of American 
business men, most of them long residents of Paris 
who left lucrative posts to give army buying the benefit 
of their varied experience. 

The Control Bureau is the clearing house for all 
American army orders. They flow in to the extent of 
several hundred each day from the Purchasing De- 
partments of the eleven Services that buy everything 
from rails to trucks. Not only must every order have 
the approval of the General Purchasing Agent but all 
orders involving amounts in excess of $1,000 must 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 315 

have the additional approval of the French Govern- 
ment. Hence the bureau maintains an intimate and 
constant liaison with the French Government which 
is one of the most interesting and constructive phases 
of its work. 

Every Service in the A.E.F. gets — and it will con- 
tinue until the army leaves France — what is known 
as the Forward Requirements of its various units. 
By Forward Requirements is meant future needs. 
These Requirements are transmitted to the General 
Purchasing Agent who consolidates them. He like- 
wise co-ordinates all demands for certain standard 
commodities. If, for example, the Quartermaster 
Corps, Ordnance and Engineers all need shovels the 
whole army need of shovels is unified in one requisi- 
tion and the buying is done by the Engineers. This 
saves labour and enables the army to buy in larger 
quantities and get the benefit of such purchasing. 

Orders for food, timber or leather require slight 
supervision. If they involve the use of metal — as the 
great majority of them do — they are caught up at 
once in a drastic scrutiny which not only shows 
Franco-American supply co-ordination at its best but 
unfolds a process of close-knit business administra- 
tion that will have its effect long after the last shot 
of the war is fired. This brings us to the Metal Con- 
trol Office whose task is to scrutinise the amount of 
metal required for the manufacture of articles for 
American army use. Installed as Metal Controller is 
Captain Charles E. Carpenter, who had been a brilliant 
and successful machinery expert in Paris in civil life. 



316 S. O. S. 

He allots all metal for A.E.F. use. If the needs of 
the different Purchasing Departments exceed the avail- 
able supply he distributes the material in proportion 
to the need. 

The moment you touch metal you touch one of the 
most zealously conserved commodities in France. The 
reason is quite obvious. In the first flush of her war 
successes and when she came down from the North 
like a "wolf on the fold" Germany acquired by con- 
quest more than eighty per cent of the iron and steel 
producing capacity of France. A metal crisis at once 
developed. The French war industries became de- 
pendent to a large extent for their raw supplies upon 
other countries. Much of this material had to come 
from the United States and therefore became a part 
of the eternal tonnage problem. Before we entered 
the war it was not so serious. Just as soon as we 
began to manufacture munitions for our own use the 
French metal situation naturally became more acute. 
Every ton of iron or steel diverted to a non-essential 
use not only meant the loss of this material to war 
necessities but likewise wasted a ton of valuable ship- 
ping. Hence the French Government wisely estab- 
lished a rigid control over the supply of all raw mate- 
rials and mainly metals. 

The advent of the American Army in numbers made 
the metal situation more serious because we began to 
place orders in France for machinery, tools and other 
articles that used steel and iron and which could not 
be shipped from the United States because we needed 
the tonnage for men and food. This constantly in- 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 317 

creasing employment of the manufacturing facilities 
of France taxed output and raw material. The Con- 
trol Bureau therefore submits all American orders 
involving metal to the French who not only act as 
censors of price and probity of contractors but prac- 
tically allot the French material to be used. 

Our orders involving metal are sent twice daily to 
what is known as the Inspection des Forges, where a 
corps of French experts, familiar with every detail of 
manufacturing, makes a rigid examination with the 
twin view of protecting both governments and pre- 
venting any waste of precious metal. This Inspection 
des Forges is one of the many constructive instru- 
ments developed by the war and because of its inevit- 
able influence with peace is well worth an explanation. 
Before the war it corresponded to the Inspection Di- 
vision of the United States Ordnance Service in that 
it inspected raw material for guns and also the finished 
product. It operated in four districts, which were 
Paris, Toulouse, Lyons and Nantes. With the out- 
break of hostilities France immediately converted it 
into an agency for the procurement of raw materials 
and machinery necessary to war industry. It resulted 
in what the name implies — a literal inspection or con- 
trol over every forge in France. It has branches — or 
Detachments as they are known — in all the smaller 
cities and through them exercises an incessant super- 
vision of the whole iron and steel industry of the 
Republic. 

The Control Bureau has a Liaison Officer, — Cap- 
tain John H. Weare, a steel man of long experience — 



3 i8 S. O. S. 

constantly at the Inspection des Forges. Just as soon 
as an American Army order arrives it is analysed. 
Many essential requirements must be met. Since it 
involves a contract with a French manufacturer the 
first step is to find out if this particular firm or indi- 
vidual is on the Black List, that is, if it is excluded 
from dealings with the French Government. Then 
comes the examination of the amount of metal re- 
quired and the relation that it bears to the distribution 
of the limited supply of raw materials in France. The 
third item is the all-important question of price, since 
it is neither the desire nor the interests of the French 
Government that the American army be charged more 
than the French consumers. The final qualification 
is the ability of the contractor to fulfil his obligation 
within the time limit prescribed. All this information 
is readily accessible to the Inspection des Forges be- 
cause its hundreds of inspectors are constantly in 
touch with the manufacturing establishments in their 
districts and know to the quarter of a ton what the 
plant capacities are. 

If the order and the contractor meet requirements 
the approval of the Inspection des Forges is stamped 
on it and it returns to the American Control Bureau 
for the General Purchasing Agent's approval. Once 
stamped with his vise the contract makes one more 
journey to another Department of the French Gov- 
ernment to be examined with regard to the possibility 
of its interference with similar work being done for 
the French armies. If no* conflict is established it 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 319 

receives the final O.K. and goes to the contractor for 
execution. 

This scrutiny shows that there is little chance for 
the profiteer to get in his nefarious work. Wherever 
evidence of attempted extortion is found the French 
Government takes the matter in its own hands and 
requisitions the material or merchandise on the ac- 
count of the army. This close team-work resulting 
from a double examination of orders by both govern- 
ments prevents competition between the two armies. 
When there is a limited supply of certain articles it 
insures equitable distribution between them. 

The probe that the Inspection des Forges applies to 
all American contracts has "smoked out" many a prof- 
iteer to the eminent satisfaction of the French author- 
ities. Just as soon as a French contractor arouses the 
suspicion of this admirable agency of conservation h*e 
is summoned to Headquarters and is put through the 
"third degree" by the French that disgorges every- 
thing. Particular attention is given to middle men or 
men who handle army contracts as a side line. The 
American army contract has been the means of ren- 
dering conspicuous service in uncovering overcharges, 
as leading officials of the Inspection des Forges glee- 
fully informed me. Upon one occasion a Parisian 
entered into a contract with the A.E.F. to provide a 
certain number of hacksaws. The contract went 
through the routine mill and reached what well might 
be called the prosecuting attorney of the Inspection des 
Forges, who, smelling a mouse, summoned the con- 
tractor to his presence. It developed that he was a 



320 S. 0. S. 

dealer in pearls who was handling hacksaws as a side 
line. The price he had made for them gave the 
French the impression that he still believed he was 
dealing in precious stones. Not only was he deprived 
of the contract but the French Government put him 
on a list where he could do no further extorting. 

The generous co-operation of the French Govern- 
ment with our army has no higher expression than, 
in the work of the Inspection des Forges, which has 
saved the United States infinite anxiety, time and 
money. This institution, however, is not only the 
watchdog of war-time product and pocket-book but 
it will be a bulwark of French industry after the war 
and a vital instrument with which to combat German 
industrial aggression. It can be developed into a 
tremendous rival of the celebrated German Metall 
Gesellschaft which, with the Allgemevne Electrische 
Gesellschaft — the Teutonic Electric Machinery Trust 
— was on the point of dictating terms to the Conti- 
nental metal industry when the war interfered with its 
mighty programme. 

Closely allied with this Metal Control is a kindred 
control of equal importance. With more than three- 
fourths of her iron and steel resources in the hands of 
the Germans, France faced a serious problem in fill- 
ing orders for the American army. She was perfectly 
willing to help us out and relieve the strain on ship- 
ping but she had to have the wherewithal to produce 
the goods. To this end an arrangement was entered 
into by which we transport raw material from the 
United States and parcel it out to the French fac- 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 321 

tories. The intermediary is the Bureau of Reciprocal 
Supply which is part of the General Purchasing 
Agent's organisation. 

Although tli is operation requires a considerable ton- 
nage the commodities into which this material is con- 
verted would require a good deal more. Experience 
has proved that the bringing in of a single ton of raw 
material saves from five to ten tons of shipping and, 
what is equally important, provides for the rapid and 
uninterrupted procurement of articles in which a scar- 
city develops. This applies to almost every known 
product from ash cans to automobile trucks, which are 
being made every day in France for the A.E.F. 

Let us assume that the Quartermaster Corps needs 
5,000 ash cans; that the Motor Transport Corps re- 
quires 1,000 five-ton truck chasses, and that the Air 
Service must have 2,000 gasolene tanks and at once. 
If orders for these articles were placed through the 
Control Bureau with French firms and with the ap- 
proval of the French Government it would absorb a 
considerable amount of raw material necessary for 
French war industry. By procuring the raw material 
from the United States the strain on the French 
sources of raw material is at once relieved and tonnage 
is saved at the same time. 

Here is where the Board of Reciprocal Supply 
comes in. The French firms who have contracts for 
these specific articles submit their requirements for 
the raw material. These requirements are transmitted 
direct to the War Industries Board at Washington 
which controls all raw material in the United States. 



322 S. O. S. 

Washington, through its various agencies, secures the 
material and ships it to France where it immediately 
becomes available for American use. 

Every day an immense amount of such material 
arrives at French ports. It must be received, stored, 
and allotted to the various French industries. All this 
requires a definite organisation. It would not pay the 
A.E.F. to build up an institution for this work for the 
simple reason that the French Government through 
its control of industry and material already has such 
a machine in operation. Hence all this material is 
turned over to the French, who store and deal it out 
to their industries, who are paid the price fixed by the 
Government. Again you have an example of the 
co-operation between the French and American Gov- 
ernments which is both constructive and economical. 

As a result of this activity the emergency needs of 
the A.E.F. are met and many thousands of tons of 
precious cargo space are saved for necessities that can 
only be manufactured in the United States, This is 
particularly true of so-called hollow-ware. A con- 
tainer of any kind as a finished article occupies a con- 
siderable amount of room on a ship. When that arti- 
cle is sent to France in the form of a sheet of iron it 
occupies much less. 

The extent to which tonnage saving has been car- 
ried is almost amusing. Let me illustrate with the 
case of macaroni. The hole in a single stick of maca- 
roni is a very trivial thing, but when you consider 
twenty or thirty millions of pounds it is not to be 
despised. Hence we ship flour in bulk from America 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 323 

and make the macaroni in France. It is good to re- 
member that in tonnage as in everything else, the sum 
of the small things counts. 

No phase of our Purchasing System in France is 
more significant than that which deals with the pro- 
curement of machine tools and for which there is a 
special Machine Tool Section. Primarily this has been 
a War of Machinery. When you have studied its 
economic phases as I have had the privilege of doing 
for the past four years, you realise the value of a 
lathe or an automatic. In the early days these ma- 
chine tools were almost worth their weight in gold. 
Some of the great American war fortunes were made 
in them, first because the Allies had to have machinery 
for shell production, and second because we ourselves 
went into the munitions business on a large scale and 
the market was combed out. 

America had been so prodigal with the sale and 
general consumption of her machine tools that when 
we actually got into the war and needed machinery for 
our various Services in France we were hard put to 
secure them. At that time army purchasing was in 
the first throes of organisation for General Dawes 
had just taken command of procurement. In order 
to expedite his work in specialised lines an Auxiliary 
Advisory Committee composed of leading American 
business men in Paris was formed. It was of im- 
mense aid in securing much-needed machinery, includ- 
ing 6,000 machine tools which were distributed among 
the Repair establishments in France. Out of this 
purely volunteer organisation grew the Central Board 



324 S. O. S. 

and the Machine Tool Section of the General Pur- 
chasing Board. In October, 191 8, however, the pur- 
chase of all machine tools and small tools was trans- 
ferred to the Ordnance Service, of which the Machine 
Tool Section is now a part. 

Behind this army acquisition of machinery is the 
larger fact that every machine tool used for war and 
which stands up under the strain of incessant wear 
and tear, will be an equally important factor with 
peace when the world will enter upon an unprece- 
dented era of industrial competition. The more ma- 
chinery we acquire now, especially in France where 
we will be compelled to establish industries to hold our 
own in the great commercial game, the better prepared 
we will be for the titanic after-the-war trade struggle. 

Our army purchasing abroad is not without its ele- 
ment of stirring interest. So unromantic a need as 
a freight car has taxed ingenuity and afforded an ex- 
ample of Yankee enterprise that fits into the great 
story of American war supply achievement. Although 
we have a succession of car shops in France there is 
always an immense demand for freight cars. A large 
car-building concern in a neutral European country 
had a contract with a French Railway for a thousand 
cars. The bodies had been built but the contract re- 
mained unfilled for the reason that between the time 
the agreement was made and the time of delivery 
approached, the price of steel advanced tremendously. 
The Company wished to increase the contract price 
and the French Railway declined to meet it. As soon 
as the General Purchasing Agent learned of this sit- 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 325 

uation he bought the bodies, rushed wheels and axles 
from the United States and our transportation sys- 
tem overseas was a thousand cars to the good. 

On another occasion there was a pressing demand 
for railway ties. It was before our sawmills got into 
action and prior to the arrangement with the French 
for the use of their forests. One of the scouts of the 
General Purchasing Agent located an immense quan- 
tity of ties in a neutral country, got them on a ship 
and landed them at a French port in record time. 

When the German hordes overran Belgium, the rail- 
way authorities of that unhappy country had the fore- 
sight to run five or six hundred locomotives into 
France under their own steam and save them from 
falling into the clutches of the Hun. It was long be- 
fore the great American Moguls began to arrive and 
we had to have engines. General Dawes heard of 
these Belgian locomotives and acquired them. To-day 
you can see them, with American engineers at the 
throttle, hauling long trains of freight cars marked 
"U.S.A." all over France. I cite these incidents to 
show how the long arm of American army acquisi- 
tion has reached out everywhere and obtained needful 
supplies without drain upon the Transatlantic Bridge 
of Ships. 

This imposing array of actual commodities gar- 
nered in many lands and under varied conditions only 
comprises one branch of American army purchase 
abroad. We now reach a detail of it that has tested 
our resource and skill to the limit. To study it we 
must leave the domain of the concrete and deal with 



326 S. O. S. 

an intangible thing, which is power. It had to be ac- 
quired in precisely the same way as guns or trucks. 

Fully to comprehend the extent of this problein 
you must understand that the A.E.F. is engaged in 
an immense industrial activity in France. We have 
enormous car and locomotive erection and repair 
shops; we build tanks; reconstruct motor transport; 
salvage endless equipment; occupy hospitals almost 
without number; operate docks; roast and grind cof- 
fee and manufacture chocolate. All this requires 
power and every Service clamours for it. How do we 
get it? 

Instinctively you would say: "Why not obtain it 
from the French ?" This is easier said than done for 
the reason that war industry made an enormous de- 
mand upon the French electric power supply, while 
extensive expansion has been greatly retarded by the 
scarcity of men, due to the calling up of millions of 
men to the colours. Our wheels had to be kept turn- 
ing. The provision of power became a vital matter 
and its procurement was put up to the General Pur- 
chasing Agent who, like our old friend G4 — the Army 
Co-ordinator — is the repository of requests. 

The General Purchasing Agent met the emergency 
by establishing what is known as a Technical Board, 
one of the many activities under his supervision. The 
executive head of this Board is Lieutenant-Colonel 
Francis E. Drake, who as Chief of the Control Bu- 
reau is the Chairman of the Technical Board. The 
active head, however, is the Chief Engineer, Major 
Dugald C. Jackson, a widely-known Consulting En- 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 327 

gineer with much experience in public utilities in 
America and who was a member of the faculty of 
the Boston Institute of Technology. Associated with 
him from the start has been Captain Albert B. Cude- 
bec, a specialist in hydro-electric construction and who, 
with Major Jackson, was one of the pioneers in Amer- 
ican army power production in France. Gradually 
they have assembled a group of more than forty engi- 
neers who in civil life built dams and irrigation proj- 
ects and installed power plants from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific. The Technical Board is a sort of Con- 
gress of Experts who, in the face of almost innu- 
merable obstacles, have furnished the "juice" to drive 
the army's many-sided industries. 

Since it was extremely difficult to get complete new 
power plants from America the Board set about to de- 
velop and adapt existing French power establishments 
to the American needs. Wherever an uncompleted 
French power station was discovered American con- 
struction gangs were put to work to complete it. Every 
possible makeshift was employed all to the end that 
power be secured. The General Purchasing Agent 
learned that some Swiss turbines intended for Russia 
had not been shipped. They were immediately se- 
cured and installed by American Engineers in a French 
power station. Our purchasing representatives scoured 
all Europe for installations. A complete plant was 
discovered in Portugal. In less than sixty days it was 
driving machinery up in the Advance Section. 

The technical knowledge required for all this ad- 
justing and adapting frequently had to be supple- 



328 S. O. S. 

mented by tact of the highest order, for the reason that 
these undertakings involved rival French commercial 
interests who were jealous of their prerogatives and 
who had to be reconciled to the larger obligation that 
both France and America were being served by this 
expansion. With power, as with railroads and docks, 
this dynamic Americanisation is helping to change the 
face of the country. Small communities that lacked 
public utilities are now enjoying the heating and light- 
ing advantages of large cities. 

The Technical Board is on the job day and night 
and it has met emergencies with a degree of swift- 
ness not surpassed on the firing line. Here is a con- 
crete story which will show the kind of propositions 
that are put up to it. On September 17th, last, Major 
Jackson received the following telegram from G4 at 
Tours : "Get 3,000 kilowatt plant in Europe." It was 
intended for immediate and urgent use at a large 
Base port that we are using. You get some hint of 
the extent of this order when I tell you that this plant 
was of sufficient power to provide electric service for 
a city of the size of Roanoke, Virginia, or Haverhill, 
Massachusetts. Within a week a plant had been lo- 
cated in England and in a month it was installed in 
France. The Supply Cities have had no monopoly 
on army wonder-working. 

A huge map that hangs in Major Jackson's office 
at the Elysee Palace Hotel gives a comprehensive idea 
of the Empire of Power that we have helped to de- 
velop in France. We use power in exactly three hun- 
dred and twenty-eight localities. Each one of these 



BUSINESS MANAGING WAR 329 

installations is shown in a concrete way. The master 
colour for steam generating plants is green, while 
hydro-electric service is in blue. Whenever the serv- 
ice is all-American the indication is surrounded by a 
red circle. In addition to this every army activity has 
its own colour. An orange square denotes a bakery; 
a black square a salvage depot; a green and white 
square an aviation centre; three white squares reveal 
a tank building plant, and so on. 

This American-developed power area means a great 
deal more than driving machinery in A.E.F. bakeries, 
salvage depots, air service stations and machine shops. 
It has a significance for peace not to be overestimated. 
Combined with the utilisation of water-power, which 
is incorporated into our general power scheme, an im- 
mense section of France is likely to be diverted after 
the war from agriculture to industry. The brilliant 
imagination of the French has caught the spirit of 
what adequate power means. In this inevitable evo- 
lution you see one of the many permanent results of 
the advent of the American army. 



XIV— The Balance Sheet 



IF all our army buying in France had been done in 
a definite and orderly manner through forward 
requirements and under circumstances which per- 
mitted the drawing up of stable contracts the task of 
economic demobilisation would be comparatively easy. 
Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Millions 
of dollars' worth of food and supplies had to be 
bought in the early days under the stress of emergency 
which knows neither haggling nor inspection. We 
had to have the stuff; the French and British saw that 
we got it, and the matter of reckoning was left to the 
then dim and distant date when, with victory assured, 
inventories could be made. 

We were not long in France before we realised that 
the American Business of War, like the American Busi- 
ness of Peace, required a good lawyer. We did what 
any corporation would do and installed a Bureau of 
Contracts and Adjustments which added another and 
highly useful section to the constantly widening or- 
ganisation of the General Purchasing Agent. Once 
more the army took toll of a big business brain be- 
cause Franklin W. M. Cutcheon, a prominent Wall 
Street attorney, who had specialised in financial law 
for years, left his desk in New York to take charge of 
what was nothing more nor less than the Legal De- 

330 



THE BALANCE SHEET 331 

partment of the American Expeditionary Force. He 
was commissioned a Captain, but his conspicuous if 
unspectacular service in disentangling the almost end- 
less kinks in our fiscal relations with our Allies has 
raised him to a Lieutenant-Colonelcy. The net result is 
that Colonel Cutcheon occupies very much the same 
relation to the army abroad that Elihu Root bore to 
the American Tobacco Company and Francis Lynde 
Stetson to the United States Steel Corporation. In 
other words, he keeps the army out of legal morasses 
and helps in no small way to pave the way to an 
orderly adjustment of our international relations when 
the war is over. 

When Colonel Cutcheon took hold in January, 19 18, 
he faced a well-nigh staggering proposition. It was 
no man's fault but the fault of the great god War. 
Practically all the first purchasing of the A.E.F. was 
done in haste. The contracts were verbal and there- 
fore indefinite. The French Government had met 
the situation promptly by allowing us to get supplies 
at cost. Hence in many instances there was no fixed 
price. Britain displayed the same generosity. When 
the bills began to come in there was naturally no way 
to check up. First of all, there was a lack of data 
about deliveries. In those first days we did not have 
enough officers to go round and Sergeants had to act 
as Quartermaster Lieutenants and receive goods. 
Many of them have been shifted; some have been 
killed; others have gone home. We had to begin to 
straighten out our financial affairs and the job be- 



332 S. O. S. 

came part of the work of the Bureau of Contracts and 
Adjustments. 

The first attack was launched against the mountain 
of unpaid bills, involving many millions of francs and 
covering items that ranged from gasolene to guns. 
The Board did what any Court would do in the case 
of a promissory note. If evidence was lacking it be- 
came a matter of good faith. Wherever receipts for 
delivery were unavailable the word of the French Gov- 
ernment was taken. The financial decks were cleared 
and an era of economic administration began. Hence- 
forth every voucher for purchases had to have the 
receipt of delivery attached, a French or British cer- 
tification which, with the United States Government 
check, concluded the transaction. 

Every army contract of importance must have the 
approval of the Bureau of Contracts and Adjust- 
ments. This work, however, does not end when the 
contract is signed or even executed as this incident 
will show. A French butcher made a contract at a 
Base port to furnish the American Expeditionary 
Force with 5,000 pounds of fresh beef every day. 
After he had begun to carry out the terms of the con- 
tract the price of meat went up. When he submitted 
his first bills he increased his price accordingly, al- 
though it was not the contract price. The Command- 
ing General of the district approved of the transac- 
tion, but the Disbursing Officer declined to pay, con- 
tending that the strict letter of the contract had to be 
fulfilled. The matter was referred to the Bureau of 
Contracts, which, after a careful investigation, de- 



THE BALANCE SHEET 333 

cided that the butcher, who was a man of excellent 
character, had no intent to gouge and was therefore 
justified in what he did, and the bill was paid. This 
is a typical example of what the Board is constantly 
called upon to do. 

The Board also deals with all claims other than 
those involving damages. The A.E.F., for example, 
may make a contract with a French quarry-man for 
a large amount of stone ; the man may be delayed so 
long in installing his machinery that the material must 
be procured elsewhere. The quarry-man, however, 
has a justifiable claim for compensation based on his 
expenditure for a new plant. It is no uncommon case. 

So, too, with the many claims of the Allied Gov- 
ernments. In these transactions Colonel Cutcheon 
acts precisely as a negotiating lawyer would act down 
in the financial district in New York when two great 
corporations are putting through a big deal. He is 
both lawyer and business-man. Typical of the com- 
plications that arise in these matters is an episode that 
relates to the British. As is now well known, a num- 
ber of American Divisions were sent to the British 
army last summer partly for intensive training and 
partly for combat. Although they were equipped 
when they arrived in France, they had to use British 
machine guns, rifles and ammunition. In addition, 
the British had to transport, feed and house them and 
provide laundries. It was not difficult to figure out 
a basis of settlement for actual new equipment, but 
the matter of land and sea transport was more com- 
plicated. The British frankly admitted that they did 



334 S. O. S. 

not know how to appraise and charge, so a "capita- 
tion" rate of a certain sum per head per day for each 
American soldier was agreed on. 

The work of the Bureau of Contracts and Adjust- 
ments will continue long after the last American 
doughboy has waved farewell to the shores of France. 
On it will depend some of the harmony of our whole 
future relations with the Allies. This observation 
brings us to still another wing in the organisation of 
the General Purchasing Agent which is engaged in 
a task no less vital to our permanent friendship with 
the great peoples with whom we have fought and bled. 
I mean the Board of Accounts which was a natural 
development of the stream of fiscal items that lit- 
erally poured into the G.P.A.'s office. 

The reason for the existence of a Board of Ac- 
counts requires no diagram. With eleven Services 
buying supplies every day; with almost continuous 
financial transactions with Allies and neutrals involv- 
ing half a dozen different kinds of money; and finally 
the necessity for a prompt winding-up of all these re- 
lations as soon as possible after peace, the need of 
fiscal centralisation and standardisation is obvious. 
The Bureau of Accounts, therefore, is charged with 
rendering a consolidated account of all A.E.F. ex- 
penditure. This means that it must mobilise, classify 
and itemise all vouchers and make up a Master Ac- 
count for the War Department at Washington. It is 
a control and record bureau rather than an operating 
institution. Its work is to create a machinery that will 
make the path to economic army demobilisation easy. 



THE BALANCE SHEET 335 

Such a work requires the most highly specialised 
direction. It was found in the person of Major C. H. 
Holloway, who in civil life was a member of one 
of the largest expert accountant firms in New York. 
With him as junior officers are men with similar ex- 
perience who have been invaluable assets in this all- 
important labour which, with the end of the war in 
sight, is just beginning. 

In analysing this work you again face the many 
complications arising out of our advent in France in 
unexpected numbers and the emergency commercial 
relations that had to be established with our Allies. 
In war every step is costly either in human life or in 
money. In times of great stress when the newspapers 
are filled with the accounts of great advances and the 
conduct of the conflict is a matter of every-day neces- 
sity the cost is seldom reckoned. But when the smoke 
of battle clears and peace is on every tongue the words 
"Settle up" have a far different meaning. The "over- 
head" on glory must be reckoned coldly and in cash. 
The A.E.F. went to France prepared to pay for what 
it got and the Board of Accounts is making it possi- 
ble to find out what it owes, and will owe when the 
end has come. 

"Why didn't the army pay as it went?" you may 
ask. Simply for the reason, as I have pointed out 
earlier in this article, that emergency knows neither 
haggling nor orderly transaction. The payment for 
actual purchases made in the normal course of war 
event is a simple piece of book-keeping. But when 
you come to appraise, for instance, the value of a 



336 S. O. S. 

forest and the basis on which it is to be restored after 
the war, it becomes a matter of pure speculation. 

Here is another case. An emergency arose through 
which the A.E.F. required many thousands of French 
horses. These beasts had to be acquired through a 
swift census of the farms of France. There was no 
time for dickering. Big guns had to be moved; we 
got the horses, and the bill will be rendered later. 

Still another instance of this inevitable financial 
"hangover" arises out of our joint occupation with 
the French or British of various sectors in France. 
Our units have been thrown temporarily into various 
districts where they purchased supplies and incurred 
other fiscal obligations. Almost before there could 
be an orderly process of accounting they were shifted 
elsewhere. Adjudication had to wait for serener 
times. 

This is why an immense amount of unpaid obliga- 
tion confronts us with the cessation of hostilities. In 
addition to the instances I have already specified it 
applies to the use of the French railways, the lease of 
locomotives from the Belgian Government, the re- 
habilitation and occupation of plants, quarries and 
hospitals, and the undetermined debts in neutral coun- 
tries. So much for our debit. 

On the other hand we have established a considera- 
ble credit for we have provided our Allies with quan- 
tities of supplies that they were unable to obtain them- 
selves, more especially food, fuel and metal stores. 
Frequently these supplies have been issued in the field 
and were recorded on scraps of paper or anything that 



THE BALANCE SHEET 337 

would hold pen and ink. The task of the Board of 
Accounts is not only to consolidate these various debits 
and credits, but establish a series of standardised forms 
which makes inter-allied financial transactions simple 
and easy. 

The way "deliveries" to Allied forces has become a 
matter of systematic record will explain what has been 
done. Every officer in the field who issues supplies 
to the French, for example, is provided with a book 
in which the issue is recorded in quadruplicate. All 
instructions are in both English and French. The 
original and duplicate are signed by the Allied Re- 
ceiving Officer and returned to the American Deliver- 
ing Officer, who keeps one and sends the other to the 
Board of Accounts. The triplicate copy is retained 
by the Allied Receiving Officer, while the fourth goes 
to the French Government. Thus all parties to the 
transaction have a definite record. In addition, the 
back of the book contains a form, also to be made out 
in quadruplicate, for the whole month's transactions. 
This is only one example of standardisation of form. 
It is being extended so as to cover every phase of 
inter-allied army negotiations involving money. A 
standard form has been made out to "bill" the British 
and French Governments that is a model of complete- 
ness and detail. All this means that when the time 
comes to balance the great Book of War there will be 
a definite and orderly basis of settlement. When you 
polish off the financial rough-spots you go a long way 
towards establishing harmony. In war or peace, 



33 8 S. O. S. 

money, or the lack of it, is the usual root of most 
evil. 

This standardisation of accounts will perform still 
another vital service for peace. It will enable the 
various Governments to know their war obligations 
in advance of that great day when the armies come 
marching home. This means that they can arrange 
for additional loans and taxes and help to adjust the 
tangle of foreign exchange which, unless anticipated, 
may be one of the economic sore spots in the epoch 
of world rehabilitation. 

The subject of money naturally leads to the Finan- 
cial Requisition Officer — Captain Raymond Ives — who 
is the custodian of the strong-box of the A.E.F. His 
office is one of the smallest in the Elysee Palace Hotel, 
yet the army can do no business without him because 
he holds the purse strings. The Disbursing Officer of 
each Service — in the main they pay their own bills — ■ 
issues checks against deposits in the branches of the 
American Trust Companies that are the accredited 
depositories in Paris. Every afternoon each of these 
Companies renders Captain Ives a total of all the 
army checks drawn on it the day before. He in turn 
gives them a check on the Bank of France to cover 
the amount. Uncle Sam maintains a generous credit 
in this great national financial institution. 

In this daily check-up you find the application of a 
rule in operation in every well-conducted corporation. 
It means that the army has no idle and inert money 
lying around loose in the French banks, as was the 
case before our system became organised. Instead, 



THE BALANCE SHEET 339 

our funds are liquid and at work. If you want to get 
some idea of what war costs I have only to add that 
the disbursing requirements for the A.E.F. for Octo- 
ber, November and December are exactly 2,693,139,- 
185 francs, or $538,627,837. 

The average reader need scarcely be told that all 
this ramified buying, which must go on long after the 
armistice is signed, and which involves hundreds of 
millions of dollars and many thousands of articles of 
every-day use, must have a background of vital statis- 
tics. Sir Eric Geddes, First Lord of the British Ad- 
miralty, and a Master Doer, once told me that the 
secret of success, in the Business of War or in the 
Business of Peace, was summed up in the sentence: 
"Statistise everything." The General Purchasing Agent 
does this very thing. Hence the Statistical Board is 
an essential instrument of co-ordination of war work 
which, as you will presently discover, is performing a 
definite service for peace. It was built up by Major 
J. C. Roop, now at other work, and is in charge of 
Major Joseph Willard Krueger, who has audited 
construction accounts all the way from the Philippines 
to the Malay States, and who was on the Board of 
Valuation of the Inter-State Commerce Commission 
when he cast off mufti for the army khaki. 

His main job is to classify and compile the consol- 
idated lists of quarterly forecasts of the army pur- 
chases. It involves an examination of every order 
for commodities and materials authorised by the 
A.E.F. He gets the similar forecasts of the British 
and French armies in France "for the purpose of 



340 S. O. S. 

comparison, standardisation and control." In simple 
every-day language this means that he must prevent 
duplication as far as possible. To achieve this de- 
sirable and economical end he has, with the co-opera- 
tion of Lieutenant Donald des Granges, a Boston 
architect in civil life, instituted a work that will make 
a definite and permanent contribution to the stabili- 
sation of international trade. It reveals a picturesque 
condition developed by the war. 

Every Service in every Allied army uses nearly 
every known kind of tool, especially in its Supply do- 
main. Each Service, however, has a different name 
for the same article. Ask an Englishman for a mon- 
key-wrench and he thinks you are talking about nat- 
ural history; speak of a frog, which is a portion of a 
railroad switch, to a Frenchman and he at once as- 
sumes that you mean one of his favourite articles of 
food. When you see a bunch of inter-allied army or- 
ders you are apt to find eight or nine different titles 
for the same thing. Let me illustrate with a common 
saw. In making requisitions the Air Service calls it 
a hand cross-cut saw; the Engineers know it as a 
cross-cut saw; Motor Transport knows it as a hand 
saw; Construction and Forestry orders it as a wood 
saw; while the Salvage Service indicates it as a car- 
penter saw. It makes for confusion. 

The Statistical Bureau is making a giant card index 
or a Vocabulary as it will be finally known, that 
standardises the name of every article that armies 
will use. The specific item of saws that I have just 
used shows the urgent need of it. In the Vocabulary 



THE BALANCE SHEET 341 

all ordering will be made for a hand saw. The Brit- 
ish and French will have a copy of this index and will 
know precisely what the Americans want, while the 
Americans in turn will be able to fill the needs of the 
Allies in the same intelligent way. 

This Vocabulary will have an immense significance 
after the war when orderly trading- between nations 
will develop at a tremendous rate. One of the great- 
est drawbacks hitherto in international business rela- 
tions has been the difficulty of different peoples in 
making one another understood. The Vocabulary, 
therefore, becomes a dictionary for world commerce 
and will be one of the many constructive contributions 
that War will make to Economic Peace. 

The work of the American army in France both at 
the front and in the Services of Supply could never 
have achieved its results without perfect liaison with 
the French and the British. Since our armies have 
operated in France and have bought, and will keep 
on buying, the bulk of their supplies from the French, 
this series would be incomplete without a brief ex- 
planation of how liaison works. I can impress its 
value no better than to quote what an American Gen- 
eral in France once said in connection with it. His 
remarks were: 

"I wish earnestly that two vital points be once for 
all brought to the minds of all American officers; 
one is that liaison is nine-tenths of the battle; the 
other is that two minutes of personal conversation 
are worth more than a ream of correspondence. ,, 

Liaison as applied to the army is the connecting link 



342 S. O. S. 

between inter-allied forces. At the Headquarters of 
the Services of Supply, for example, there is a so- 
called French Mission which represents the authority 
of the French army. All negotiations with the French 
must be made through that Mission. Attached to 
every Service, largo or small, is a French Liaison Offi- 
cer. When any matter arises that requires French 
intervention or co-operation it is referred to him first. 
In the Elysee Palace Hotel is a considerable French 
Mission which acts as the intermediary in all matters 
of purchase and which stamps the final French ap- 
proval on all American orders for goods bought in 
our Sister Republic. 

Sum up the work of the fiscal activities that flour- 
ish under the banner of the General Purchasing Agent 
and you find that they write a consolidated insurance 
policy against post-war investigations and scandals. 
Long and costly experience has shown that it is not 
war itself that digs the graves of reputations but the 
official inquiries that come afterwards. When peace 
finally broods John Jones of Oshkosh or anywhere 
in the United States who bought a Liberty Bond may, 
and probably will, demand to know how his money 
was spent in France. Thanks to a standardised ac- 
counting system and a recorded "follow-up" of sup- 
plies to the point of consumption he will be told to 
the last dollar. The balance sheet of the American 
Expeditionary Force will be as clean as the consciences 
of the gallant men who registered their heroism on the 
field of battle. 

It only remains to speak of the significant co- 



THE BALANCE SHEET 343 

ordinating agencies that supplement the Business 
Managing of War and rear the unbroken bulwark of 
Allied Supply. Chief among them in many respects 
is the Military Board of Allied Supply which is wholly 
American in conception. 

After the momentous decision was made for mili- 
tary unification of the Allied front under the su- 
preme command of Marshal Foch, General Pershing 
made the proposition to the Allied Governments last 
April that it was absolutely essential to match this 
with a military unification of the rear. He made a 
general request for an immediate consideration of the 
matter. He appointed General Dawes, then a Colonel, 
to represent the A.E.F., while M. Clemenceau named 
M. Loucheur, the French Minister of Armament, to 
consult and suggest a plan. They jointly devised a 
scheme for co-ordination which was discussed at two 
conferences. M. Clemenceau presided at one of them. 

The result of these international conferences was 
to demonstrate again the enormous difficulty so often 
encountered throughout the entire war of securing 
agreement between large bodies. In his great desire 
to secure military unification of the rear General 
Pershing authorised General Dawes to state to the 
inter-allied conferences that if it could not be accom- 
plished otherwise he would relinquish the command 
of his own rear in favour of either a Frenchman or an 
Englishman under a plan of consolidated authority. 
Finally, realising the necessity for quick decision, Gen- 
eral Pershing, without waiting for a conclusion of the 
inter-allied conferences, submitted a plan to M. Clem- 



344 S. O. S. 

enceau which they jointly signed. He then sent Gen- 
eral Dawes to England to see Lloyd George and Vis- 
count Milner, the British Secretary of State for War, 
to secure the acquiescence of the English Government 
After General Dawes's explanation of the plan the 
English Government, through Viscount Milner, for- 
mally accepted it. 

The plan, as finally adopted, provided for the co- 
ordination of the rear of the three armies by means 
of a Military Board consisting of one officer from 
each army. The President of this Board is Colonel 
Charles Payot, who has been in command of the rear 
of the French Army for the last three years, and is 
considered one of the ablest officers in the allied armies.. 
Major General Reginald Ford represents the British 
Army and General Dawes by nomination of General 
Pershing represents the American Expeditionary 
Force. The Italian Army in France is represented by 
General Merrone and the Belgian Army by Major 
Cumont. 

The complete record of the formation and accom- 
plishments of the Military Board of Allied Supply 
or, as the French term it, the Comite Interallie des 
Ravitaillements, will afford one of the most illumi- 
nating studies of both the difficulties and the enor- 
mous advantages of allied co-ordination and will shed 
a new light upon the strong character and broad 
vision of the American Commander-in-Chief. 

The Military Board of Allied Supply only repre- 
sents one angle of the extraordinary team-work be- 
tween the Allied Governments which brought Ger- 



THE BALANCE SHEET 345 

many to her knees. Its full mate is the Inter-Allied 
Munitions Council which standardised shells and guns 
and enabled America, for one thing, to take her place 
in the battle-line without delay. The principal Amer- 
ican member is Mr. Edward R. Stettinius, whose 
great work as Chief Purchasing Agent of the Allies 
in America in the early years of the war equipped him 
admirably for this huge task. He has occupied a 
dual role in the fact that he went to France as a 
special representative of the Secretary of War, which 
made him an unofficial and overseas member of the 
Cabinet. The Council created vast pools of ammuni- 
tion upon which the three Allied armies drew. 

Full mate in co-ordination is the Inter-Allied Mari- 
time Transport Council which will endure in history 
and likewise in the gratitude of the whole American 
people because, to the great sacrifice of British inter- 
national trade, it placed great fleets of ships at the dis- 
posal of the United States and for months on end 
carried practically sixty per cent of our troops to 
France. Without this aid we might have continued a 
negligible fighting factor and might not have been in 
strong at the death. 

All this close-knit endeavour, both in supply and 
transport, dramatises an inter-allied co-operation that, 
in the last analysis, expresses the principle upon which 
the whole structure of modern industry is reared. In 
the adjustment of those larger problems arising be- 
tween Labour and Capital the key to harmony lies in 
collective bargaining. The Allies have won the war 
because, after nearly four years of acting on their 



346 S. O. S. 

own, they subordinated individualism to the bigger 
issue of defeating Germany. What was said in the 
beginning of this chapter may now be repeated and 
emphasised at the close. In this unity of effort in 
the front and the rear lies the real reason for democ- 
racy's triumph. 

How long this team-work will obtain after peace 
no man can tell. The struggle to live, both with the 
individual and the nation, will become a fierce battle 
for existence. It will be a case of the survival of the 
fittest. Whatever happens, one thing is certain. The 
lessons of co-ordination learned in the travail of war 
emergency will have their constructive effect long 
hereafter. 

History will give the American fighting men a high 
place in the Valhalla of the Great War. Because of 
the unexpected end of the struggle they did not have 
the opportunity to show their mettle in larger numbers 
and in a wider field, however ardent their hope. Their 
comrades of the rear have been more fortunate. 
Their task began the moment the American flag was 
unfurled on the Soil of Freedom, and they were able 
to record a complete achievement in force that will 
endure with the gallantries of Chateau-Thierry and 
Saint Mihiel. 

There is glory in Supply as well as in Combat. 



THE END 



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